GOTM 108 First Spoiler

[Deckhand]

GOTM 108 First Spoiler

Stop! If you are participating in GOTM 187, then you MUST NOT read this thread unless EITHER

• You have reached at least 1 AD in your game, OR
• You have submitted your entry

Use this thread to tell us what happened in your game, up to 1AD!
What do you think neilmeister would have asked about if he wasn't too busy to open the thread?

Posting Restrictions

• Please do not disclose ANY events or information gained post 1 AD.
• Please do not reveal your final result if that happened after 1 AD.
• Please do not discuss the location of resources that may not show up before 1 AD. (Iron is OK, coal and oil are not)
• Please do not reveal names or locations of any civilization not accessible by galleys.
• Do not post any savegame file from the game. Discussions and screenshots are fine but not actual games

 

[Deckhand]

I don't expect to get any fastest awards this game. As usual, I still don't know what victory I'm heading toward.

At 1 AD I have 8 cities:
1. Settled in Place - 4000 BC
2. 1E of Gems - 2520 BC
3. 2N of Horse, by silk with corn - 1680 BC
Took Civil Service from Oracle 1360 BC
4. NW of copper, NE of cows - 975 BC
5. Cumae, NW of bananas with 2 gold, captured from Rome - 450 BC
6. Rome - captured 350BC
7. NE of marble, 3S of city #3 cows - 250 BC
8. W of Stone, NE of cows - 25 BC
9. Antium, 2S of pigs with dye/ivory - expect to capture it 25AD

Declared on Jules 575BC with 15 immortals and an axe. Pillaged his iron right away, but not before he built a Praet He didn't take the bait to move his units out to kill mine next to his cities. But he did move the Praet out to guard his wheat. So, I attacked and lost 4 immortals killing two archers and wounding his spearman to .1. But do to a misclick my last unit couldn't reach it and Praet moved back in (and spear survived). So I decided I would need to wait for catapults.
Antium was guarded by two axemen (and archer) and my immortals didn't even attack it.
Cumae only had archers defending it, and immortals took it with one loss per archer.
Eventually Rome moved the Praet out again and I was able to kill the spear and archer defenders. Then next turn lost (only) swordsman and immortal before finally killing the Praet. Took peace in 325BC for Monarchy.
50 BC (ten turns later) - Went after Antium with 3 catapults, 3 axemen and 6 immortals. Took the extra turns to reduce the cultural defense, so not yet captured at 1AD.

I'm sure much more efficient warring was possible. But at least Warlords is forgiving.

Goody Huts: 1. Archery, 2. Jules snatched one away right before I could, 3. Scout (by Isabella border), 4. 73 gold

Mining then Animal Husbandry. Worker, warrior, scout, settler. Found northern horses 2560BC same turn settler was finished. But decided to get gems first. A few turns later I found the southern horses (where I put my 3rd city).

Warlord level sure is easy. I'm 4-6 techs ahead of everyone.

Nice set up - all AIs can get metal before we get horses. But they are still rushable at warlords level. Is it better to concentrate on rushing or building your own cities? (or both like I did?)

 

[enKage]

Cities:
1) SIP
2) 2600 BC 1NW from gold
3) 2040 BC 1 SE from horse
4) 1520 1S fro Gems
5) 875 east from cap on PH for cows and corn
6) 750 1 SE from marble in the north
7) 575 1 SE from rice in the west
8) 325 1E from claim
9) 125 eastern river sharing corn and cows with 5)
I also managed to take 1 Roman city 1N from dyes and 1 barb city, so have 11 cities, but a little lack of warkerrs.
Still have place for 2 cities to settle quickly

My war with Roman was short as I noticed he can build prets. Sued for peace. As Jules converted to Confu I decided to leave him alone for the rest of the game. Will keep with him and Mansa for the rest of the game and probably go diplo.

Not a single wonder, but half my way to GLib

135 reserach with Beauro but without academy yet, rather weak start I would say, 2 turns to construction. After construction will take Alex and Isa, and then we will see

 

[Jastrow]

At 1 AD, I have only 6 cities (and one settler, plus two setters half built) for a total of 22 pop. I am brining in 175 bpt @ 100% (and ~150 at break even, ~90%). I also have 9 villages, 3 hamlets and 2 cottages.

Printing press is 3 turns away, and Oxford will come in 13... I am projecting ~300 bpt sustainable at that time.

I do not have Alpha yet, but obviously, I am way ahead of these AI in techs... No real plan yet, but I dont expect breaking out will be an problem.

 

[zbgayumn]

Wow, among the early reporters, I am the most vicious warmonger. There's a rarity!

At 1 AD, I have 12 cities. 5 Settled, 3 Roman, 3 Mali, and 1 Greek.

I thought I got started a bit late on the Immortal attack because it took so long to find horses and and hook them up. I saw the "hidden" horse up above the tundra much later than the one down south. I'm not too sad about that, though, as the northern horse city would be basically useless.

I only had about 5 Immortals when I went in for Rome. JC had some archers but still some warriors as well. I think in Antium I killed an Archer at 78% odds and the next Immortal only got 70% odds against the warrior. So, there you go neilmeister!

In retrospect, I should have gone for the Greeks first. I sent a contingent down there while I was still mopping up the Romans, but his cities were full of Phalanxes, so I hightailed it out of there. I cranked out about 6 Axes and made another appearance shortly before 1 AD. Taking out the Malinese Skirmishers wasn't exactly a piece of cake either, but at least he didn't have any metal.

Taking capitals would be really tough for my current forces, so I just finished Construction in 25 BC. Bring on the Cats!

I'm not too worried about maintenance costs at this point, because after Construction I don't think there are any Techs I actually need. The AI have no hope of getting Longbows, so I'm pretty content to conquer the world (or the continent, anyway) with Immortals and Cats.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Wow, among the early reporters, I am the most vicious warmonger. There's a rarity!

At 1 AD, I have 12 cities. 5 Settled, 3 Roman, 3 Mali, and 1 Greek.

To misquote Angel after Faith claims to be the best actor... 2nd most vicious

13 cities. Rome dead. Greece just died a few turns ago. Forces just arrived at Spanish borders. And I've just self-researched civil service (after, somewhat to my surprise, just as I was about to start building the Oracle to slingshot it in 900BC, I discovered it had already gone).

I'm warring rather faster than normal mostly because of the no-city-razing option: I don't want to have to put up with tons of mis-settled AI cities. And I rather surprised at how easy it is - I guess because of the difficulty level. I can't recall ever having anywhere near this many cities at 0AD before. The land around us I very nice as well.

 

[Htadus]

In the game intro I was thinking about doing a warrior rush. It turned out it was doable to at least 1 Civ. Actually could have done it to alex and Hatty too but the distance was prohibitive.

SIP and started a worker while heading to BW. Popped a Settler from a hut and founded there second city by gems and several FP's. Found Rome and rushed it with 7 warriors but jumped the gun and dowed with just 3 to capture a worker. Then waited until 2 more joined before attacking. Rome was gone with some lucky rng that yielded a woody 2 warrior.

After AH, Pot, PH, ;earned Writing and CoL. Got CS sling. By this time there were about 7 cities. Next it was to MC before heading to Education with several detours.

I did not stop until 50AD. Alex annoyed me with demands. So I dowed him with 2 axemen and added 1 more axe and a maceman. They were all dead attacking against 2 axes. At 0AD I had 14 or 16 cities. 3 turns from Guild and in a war that I should not have started.

Hoping to see if it is possible to challenge the Gold medal. Science it at 50% thanks to many developed cottages. Our continent is big enough to get the domi.

 

[zamint3]

Settled 1NW for a little more production.

CS-sling 1040BC , Mids 700BC built iafal

Construction 950BC

Stole 2 early workers from JC and declared 475BC (Rome 400BC, Cumae 325BC, Antium 250BC)
DOW on Mansu 125BC (Kumbi Saleh 100BC, Djenne 100BC)

Razing cities never crossed my mind, AI and barb cities are very nicely placed:

Spoiler :

Cumae: Cow, Stone,Rice
Antium: Cow, 2 Ivory, 2 Dye, Gold, Spices
Kumbi Saleh: Horses, Gems, Clam
Djenne: Rice, 2 Banana, 2 Ivory, Spices
Minoan (Barb): 3 Silk, Corn, Horses
2nd Barb city: Pastured cow and rice

At 1AD i have 12 cities and 3 more to come next turn

Army: Cats only
I've built 22 and lost 4. At Timbuktu I face 4 skirmishers, 3 of them fortified with city garrison 1 promotion, he's culture is down to zero and I have 11 cats with mostly CR1 promotion.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Took the Challenger saved game. The possibility of getting a free Worker intrigued me, so I was willing to explore for up to 5 turns with my Settler.

I'm not sure if Barb Animals can actually attack you if you have unused "free wins," which might actually allow for near-infinite wandering with one's Settler when one doesn't start with any other unit which could win battles, but I wasn't going to push it.

I looked for a Plains Hills square or some other 2-Hammer City Centre square, believing (incorrectly) that the Expansive Trait would give us a bonus 25% to Worker production (which, I realised later, doesn't apply in Civ 4 Vanilla games, sigh), thereby thinking that I'd make up some of the turns exploring by ensuring that I made 4 Hammers per turn while building a Worker.

No free Worker, but I did pop an exploration unit from a Hut with my Settler, who went on to pop a couple of more Huts himself, so it wasn't a totally boring set of first turns as it might have been had I just settled in place without an exploration unit to my name.

My capital ended up producing 5 Hammers per turn initially (I settled on a Plains Hills square and worked a PH Forest). Of course, I didn't get a bonus to Worker production for being Expansive, but at least it was a 12-turn Worker due to settling on the PH square, so that fact helped to make up for having moved my capital location.

I found a couple of Horse Resources in very awkward locations... that's probably the question that Neilmeister might have asked us about... "Did you like where I placed the Horse Resources?" Well, I made do by settling on top of a wet Corn Resource (ouch, what a waste) for my third City.

Mansa stonewalled my forces, more than once, but prior to then, I'd had some good success against the Romans, the Greeks, and the Spanish.

The extra First Strikes on Skirmishers are brutal, and even the occasional Flanking II Immortal just wasn't getting good random number generation and those Flanking II Immortals just kept dying, despite their immunity to Free Strikes and their higher chance of retreating.

 

[Agni Neres]

Hello all, this is my very first game of Civ4. I am an old Civ2 player, who could not pass up a hardcopy of Complete Ed. at a bargain-bin price. I have a lot to unlearn

I hope to complete before the weekend is over so I can submit. I will not be winning any medals, but it's fun just to participate. I used the GOTM 107 start to learn a lot of the game's basics, playing to about 400 AD a few times with different strategies.

I found the Romans first and decided to expand east, to check them. I did not want to fight Rome until after Praetorians were essentially obsolete (ie, until gunpowder). My plan was to box them in until then with my cultural borders. I deferred the resources (gems, wine, etc) and never even got horses, as I didn't realize I needed them for my UU. I also missed the marble for a long time. I built a lot of libraries and was hoping my Creative trait would flip a small Roman city, but no dice.

At 1 AD I had 8 cities, one of which was a Barb State captured on the coast west of SIP tile. That city became powerful quickly with a lighthouse. Just before 1AD I had a GS bulb PHIL and thus founded my state religion of Taoism.

I would like to ask your opinions, should I jump straight to BTS, or is it worthwhile to play vanilla while just learning?

 

[Deckhand]

I would like to ask your opinions, should I jump straight to BTS, or is it worthwhile to play vanilla while just learning?

Opinions differ.
I think it is worthwhile to learn the game on vanilla and add the complexities of BtS later. But later could just be a week or two.
I like playing all three versions in the GOTM for the variety.
Many people prefer to just play BtS as it is the best of the Civ series.

 

[Jastrow]

I dont think that more than 2 games of vanilla will particularly help you learn towards BTS. The added compleity is sort-of modular, so you can easily learn directly with BTS.

Having said that, I personally think it is well worth playing all 3 variants for G/W/B-OTM variety.