GOTM 11 Final Spoiler

[ainwood]

GOTM 11 Final Spoiler

Reading requirements:

1. Have completed & submitted your game.

Posting Restrictions

1. Please no screenshots of modern resources (oil, aluminium, uranium).

How did you close-out this game? Did you survive to the end? Did you manage to bend the world to your way of thinking, either via conquest or diplomacy? Did you find it difficult with the large land areas and distances involved?

 

[bshumbera]

Got tired of losing so many GOTMs and hadn't played Civ in a few weeks so I took the HOF adventurer start. I really wish I didn't because of the way the starting position was so protected by the terrain. Barbs were never a problem and I think I could have handled them fine on my own.

I initially wanted to try to get my first domination win, but got tired of the slow end game. The long distances made for an extremely long game. Had I played the regular start file, I probably would have held on to see if I could have won the cow award.

As far as the game goes, Monty and I played friends the whole game. Nearly the entire game was spent with us as war allies against the other factions. We went to war with Bismarck fairly early and I was able to occupy those lands. The joint war vs. Napolean took quite a bit longer but I was able to take over most of the French lands by the mid 1800s. Monty and I continued taking out the Pink team (can't remember the leader right now) and then went for Alexander. By the year 2000 I had roughly 65% of the world population, but only a little over 50% of the land area. I was way behind in military power to Monty so I didn't want to war with him. As I said, the endgame was slow. If it were a game where I could have won cow by not using adventurer start, I would have held on until 2050, but in 2004 I voted myself the diplomatic winner. Final score was somewhere between 12000 and 13000. Anyhow, great experience and first GOTM win in 4 tries, even though it was my first adventurer game. I'll play the regular start from now on.

Edit to add that Monty eliminated Ghandi before the game even got started.

 

[Meatbuster]

Challenger level start.

My game isn't available anymore due to recent hard disk breakdown. I reinstalled Civ properly and it plays well but the games are gone, taking with it my desire to play HOF. Of course I won't replay this GOTM. Damn, I should've submitted earlier.

So what happened to Napoleon in my game? A few years after 500AD I found the city at the iron east of the capital and there, I find Napoleon and his capital of Paris. I attacked him immediately and was "OMG HIS CAPITAL IS A GODDAMN WASTELAND!" There are no improved tiles around his capital. It's just trees and flood plains! A grand total of 4 archers are in it, ensuring a quick win with my flood of Flanking II Horse Archers. Cut a long story short, Napoleon died fast.

Bismarck was next. While giving in to demand after demand from Monty (and trading with Gandhi), the war went quite well. I grabbed one of Bismarck's tundra cities near the French city of Lyons (founded west of Paris) while defending my city north of Washington (New York) from endless streams of Axemen and Spearmen (and soon, Catapults and Macemen and Elephants... ouch). I advanced from the French Front and I eventually overtook Berlin in around... 1400AD (after one peace treaty).

Monty backstabbed me after the second war with Bismarck, forcing me to declare peace before I eat up all of Germany. I lost Philadelphia to him but retake it later. Paris almost fell due to sudden appearance of a 4-unit Barbarian stack backstab, but surprisingly a heroic Longbow held out against three of them (the extra unit started pillaging but died from a responding Horse Archer).

During that time I remained in Monarchy and Washington built Hanging Gardens, Hagia Sophia... I built Heroic Epic in New York (north of Wash.). Academy in Paris, which became my Great Scientist factory + flood plain cottage spam economic hybrid city.

Bismarck later bit the dust around 1700AD when I finally got around to wiping him off the land bridge and raze his new ice cities. I must admit, that patch of water was weird weird weird. Whale on coast? Unheard of.

The war with Monty lasted longer than I hoped, all the way to the 1800's. He never stops building units. Tons of Macemen vs Grenadiers and Cavalry? Still tough. When I got Cannons it was over quickly in around 1920.

I found (quite late) there was a huge barb city.

Gandhi was first to Liberalism. I was the first to Economics and Physics. During all this time Gandhi held off wars with Qin Shi and Alex, stunting his growth but still remained a good trading partner and defended well... THAT IS, before I declared a proxy war on him to boost my relationships with Qin and Alex.

I go diplomatic again. During the war with Monty I did gift a ton of techs, convert to Free Religion, ferry a couple of (CAVALRY-ESCORTED) missionaries to Qin and Alex's places. Fortunately I was able to bribe them to convert to Confucianism and also maintain the Gandhi war. And I win by Diplomacy in the 1980's after a period of converting back to Confucianism, and after a prolonged proxy war against Gandhi (surprisingly he never fell below second place and only lost a single city due to his better military). Granted Qin and Alex are very difficult to trade with, but they did fine replacing Gandhi.

Not as fast as my other Monarch games, and I'm not proud of the mistakes I made in the wars like losing Philadelphia. I could've also won faster by not going to Military Tradition, Steel, Economics (for Mercantilism + Representation, I took Bismarck's Pyramids) before the Mass Media beeline. But I really wanted to kill Monty before I won. I hate hate hate that bastard.

How many religions did that nut Gandhi start? Confucianism is all mine and dominated the world. Bismarck, Napoleon and Monty converted to Confucianism... which means Gandhi had ALL OTHER SIX including Islam! Me and my tech trades...

 

[bio_hazard]

Contender. Retired somewhere around 1850's.

An interesting and fun game, although I didn't play it very well. As I mentioned in my first spoiler, poor initial city placement meant that i missed the gold for a long time.

In my game the barbarians had quite a set of interconnected cities towards the middle of the map. Do barb cities trade with each other? They had a surprising number of roads. Upon seeing all that 'unclaimed' territory, my goal was to expand into that region, build up so I had enough power for the AI to take me seriously, and then try to go to war with AI's one at a time and try to expand enough to be in the running for a diplo victory.

My plan started out pretty well. I managed to snag a couple of barb cities to the SE, including one near the elephants and one near the copper. I got a GE at this time, and plunked down Versailles in this copper city. I expanded with a couple more cities to the east of this, but at this point the AI seems to have gotten over its hangover.

HC started sending some pretty big stacks to take out the barb cities, much faster than I could do. Also at about this time, Napoleon out of nowhere declared on me. He briefly took philidelphia, which was at the eastern end of the skinny strip of land south of the mountains (west of the iron), but I was able to retake it. He threw a lot of troops at a city to the south between Phily and the copper city as well, but I managed to keep enough troops garrisoned there, and my longbowmen got well promoted. I'll say I was actually fairly impressed with the AI's use of troops, although Napoleon didn't keep enough in Phily, when he attacked other cities, he kept his troops in the forest, on hills, and waited to consolidate more troops rather than throwing them at the walls one at a time.

Somewhere in there I popped iron from a mine next to Washington!

I've never built either walls, castles, or forts before, but built all three in response to Napoleon... A fort 1 tile north of the copper was pretty important in funneling all of the french troops one direction...

I sued for peace once I retook Philly. Napoleon declared again fairly quickly. This time, I converted from no state religion to whatever religion china was and brought them in against france, using much of the gold from a great merchant I just cached in. France's attack was definitely muted this time, but I couldn't put together enough troops to do much damage (my pillaging stacks quickly got creamed). Unfortunately China was pretty ineffective, and didn't manage to take a single city. I then converted to Judaism, which was HC's religion. He became friendly but wouldn't join my war- he was busy beating up on Bizmark. I had settled with Napoleon again, and figured I could finally get my economy back on track and improve some land, but out of nowhere, Alexander declared on me. He was pretty powerful after destroying Ghandi, but far away, so I figured he would be ok to handle. Well, he sent some massive stacks my way and eventually took (and retook, twice) the copper city with Versailles. At about this time, HC declared on me as well (although we were Pleased, and I was the same religion as him). I retired at this point, realizing Bizmark was probably about to do the same, and I had completely run out of military reserves and diplomatic friends.

I'm amazed at how slow the tech pace was- riflemen were just coming on line in the mid 1800's.

I think I'll go back down to Prince for a while...

 

[Markus5]

I played contender and retired in the late industrial or early modern era.

I made many mistakes in this game. I should have taken Germany out of the game. I left them alone and used them as a trading partner. I was attacked early by France, and lost my city near the iron. I couldn't attack with any force at that time. I waited and built an army of muskets, cats and cavs. I was almost ready when France attacked again. I rolled over France taking 80% of their land. I was just a few units short and a few war-weary citizens long of taking the whole thing. I improved the new lands and kept building units. Life was good. I was one turn from attacking France to wipe them out, and was going to back-stab my German buddies, but green meanies attacked from the south. I held them off at several choke points and finally made peace, but it was a dire warning. Green death was running away with the map. I built up a massive (so I thought) force and guarded the choke points. I took a chance to divert the forces to try to finish France and go for Germany again. Again, one turn from that attact, the green horde came in from the south. I couldn't get my attack force back from the French border and one city fell. It had 12 infantry garrisoned in it. All of my other forces were gathering near France. I counted the green units after the attack... 35 cavs, 30 infantry, 10 arty, 4 tanks. That was after 20 or so fell against my city. After a few turns, I folded.

I couldn't find anyone that hated the green menace. I retrospect, I should have tried to convert to his religion. I gave into all other demands.

 

[bio_hazard]

@ markus5 - he would have attacked you anyway- I was his religion and had done everything he asked- only negative was trading with bizmark after their war was over.

 

[Absoleus]

First post, first GOTM, first Monarch game
Won on my 3rd try. Decided to rush to the iron, since having no iron for cannons made me retire from my too first games.

Normal difficulty lvl (don't remember the name).
Cap 1E of the starting place. Workboat, workboat, worker, settler start.
2040BC NY founded in 1W from the horses.
1320BC Rushed Boston to the Iron / cows / corn (?) near Paris.
825BC First religion (Buddhism) came to me from Monty.
775BC Found Philadelphia 1E of the pigs, on the hills.

Managed to get rid of the raging barbs with chariots and some classic fogbusting.

525BC Built the Oracle in Washington, got CoL from it, which enables me to found Confucianism in 500BC, convert to it, and start pumping missionaries to convert Bismark and add a +1 happy face to my 4 cities.
Monty did ask me for several tributes, but I just refused, knowing well that tribute or not, he'll come sooner or later for war.

First target was Bismark, why ? because he's the closest one, and not well defended (as far as I could see). So war is declared in 225 AD. Got Franckfurt in 300, Munich in 450, and Hamburg in 720. Berlin was too well guarded at this time, I needed more cats.

820AD Time to rush some units, hanging garden is founded in my cap, and now I got the cats to finish Bismark. But hey, things never go as intented when you have that "green menace" just south of you.

880AD Took Essen and pillaged Bismark's only bronze mine. Letting some units there, to be sure he doesn't build more defense for Berlin.

920AD The green menace comes out of the shadow, and declares war. With my iron units, his horse archers and elephants are no match, even in great, GREAT, number. Time for peace with bismark, I can't fight on 2 opposite borders at the same time. And how nice, I got metal casting for that peace treaty

960AD Napo converts to confucianism, should make him stay oustide my business with Monte for a few more turns. Well actually, I just razed one city of Monte, killed a LOT of his units (hmmm good XP), and made peace in 1170. I wanted to go back after Bismark, he's still on MY land

1350AD Time to finish Bismark, Berlin will fall in 1410 (and with it, the Pyramids) and immediately after that, my good confuscianism fellow (Nappy) declares war to me... And Bismark is still not finished. Time for Police state (my people is starting to be really annoyed with war), Theocrathy, and peace with Bibi in 1505.

I just have the time to get ride of Nappy's units (god bless the forest between him and me), take Paris and 2 other cities, and Bismark enters the dance again. Good point, everybody is pleased with everybody BUT me in this part of the land, letting them declaring war is the best option not to worsen my relationships.

1735AD I finished kicking out Bismark out of my part of the land. (Thing I made in 700AD in my first try). It's time for peace and city improvements.

1824AD Monte declares war to me. Hehehehe, I have cannons and grenadiers, he's got a few musketeers. I knew he'd come for me, therefore I prepared 5 galleys in the little sea bewteen him and me. While his major forces fight my defense stack in my only border city, I take out his defenseless cities in the back of his territory.

1906AD 10 new cities later, I accept to make peace with monte. In the meanwhile, Gandhi is razed by Alex and Quin. With my current technological advance, I decide to go for a Space victory. I think I could have continue to a domination victory with my highly experienced units, but I'm just not a Warlord

Next marking events are my war against Nappy (again) in 1974, which will finish in 2003, with 5 more cities, and a severe handicap to my developpment due to war unhappiness. Alex beat me by 5 years on the Apollo Prog, but with all my factories, I managed to get the 3 georges Dam in 2013, the space elevator in 2015, and the final SS thingies in 2030.

Really nice game, enjoyed each hour of it

 

[mike p]

I'll pick where I left off in the first thread. Challenger version, and I've just declared war on Bismark to keep him from hooking up his copper. He's built the Pyramids, Great Lighthouse and Parthenon in Berlin and has 8 archers defending it. I have several chariots, a few archers and 7 or 8 catapults heading north to wipe him out.

I took his first city along the neck with the crabs easily, and managed to grab Berlin without too heavy of losses. Two turns before I got there Bismark popped a great engineer, but instead of building a wonder he started a Golden Age. Damn.

I finished up on Munich and built up some forces to go after Monty. I left a couple of units up there busting the fog so now the only place barbs can get at me is along the strip of land east of my capital, except that Monty has just placed a city there too.

I built a bunch of wonders and once the copper was hooked up and I had some macemen and three galleys, I invaded Monty, taking his core area in the south west corner of the map and a couple of cities to the south of the French iron. This was all done by around 1300 AD. It was made easier by the fact that My Buddy Monty had been trading me Ivory for Deer and Crabs.

Meanwhile I had sent explorers east across the sea from Berlin, and found a barb city just across the water that had Iron, so I prioritized grabbing that. I met Qin in 1220, Gandhi in 1230, and Alex in 1260.

I discovered Liberalism in 1310 and learned Nationalism. I'm going for Military Tradition and then Conquest by Cavalry.

Napoleon was at war with Gandhi while I was fighting Monty, but Nappy ended up making up with Gandhi and attacking me instead. Luckily he had mostly horse archers still, which were no match for macemen or musketmen.

Eventually I finished researching Military Tradition, revolted to Police State and conquered the world. It was kind of comical watching my giant stack of 12 cannons reaching 5 Greek cities in a row one turn after my cavalry already razed them. Conquest victory in 1824 AD, if memory serves.

 

[Mad Professor]

Contender. 1834 Domination. Score: 45,736. Playing time: 17 hours 12 minutes.

This took longer than I thought it would. I didn’t realise just how much land there was in this kind of map. Also, I was fooled by my small map which gives a false impression of how much land you do have. That coupled with a rather slow start, and I took longer to wrap this one up than I was expecting. In the end though it wasn’t so bad – I’m not a warmonger and I chose domination as my goal for something different after a couple of peaceful space race victories in recent GOTM’s.

Just to give you an idea of how fooled I was, I was expecting to wrap it up in the early 1700’s. However, in 1775AD, after I thought I should have wrapped it up, I had the following stats:



70% of the world’s population is about where I thought I was at, but the land area I just couldn’t see how it was right. Apart from me and Alex, only Bismarck and Napoleon were still alive, with only a couple of cities on the northern ice cap each. Those two, plus barbarians amounted to the 8% of the population Alex and I did not have. That I could see. What I could not see was how Alex and I had only 47% of the land area between us??

A little later, in 1818AD, when I apparently had 52% of the land area now, my small map showed me this picture:



Does this look like 52% to you? It didn’t to me, though later careful counting proved (of course) that the computer was counting correctly!!

Anyhow, enough on that. The computer was right, I was just fooled. In the end I found the Sistine chapel handy (+2 culture per specialist) in expanding area under my control, and I also plonked down about six or seven cities late in the game, working just the city tile, and running an artist under caste system to get quicker expansion. That way I filled up a few holes and got up to about 67% of the land area, leaping over the line by using a great artist culture bomb in a just-captured German city. I finished with 83% of the world’s population which impressed me – I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before (except when going for conquest).

Wars
Early muscle flexing:
Monty declared on me 425BC. Inconclusive. No cities captured, I did fair bit of plundering, I got Monotheism off him for peace in 50AD.
I declared on Monty in 350AD. Again inconclusive, More plundering, worker stealing, got Meditation off him for peace in 560AD
Declared on Napoleon in 720AD, captured Paris, Lyons, Orleans and got peace in 1050AD leaving him with a couple of cities on the northern ice cap.
More serious campaigns:
Declared war on Bismarck 1440AD. Bismarck had been racing away in tech and this made him candidate number one for me. He also had the pyramids, and I wanted police state to finish the big endgame war I was planning. After getting peace with Napoleon, I built, preparing for war against Bismarck, and the launch of my serious world-conquering campaign. Got peace with Bismarck in 1630AD, leaving him with a couple of cities on the northern ice cap, got engineering off him for peace. Oh – in 1565AD, Napoleon declared on me, but didn’t do anything. I think I took another city off him.
Declared on Monty in 1630AD, as soon as I had peace with Bismarck, and destroyed him in 1760AD.
Declared on Win Shi Huang in 1700AD, charging across his lands fairly quickly, wiping him out in 1775AD.
Declared on Alex in 1785AD, and remained at war with him until achieving domination in 1834AD. I also declared on Bismarck again in 1810AD to try and grab territory faster.

I found the terrain really slowed things down, and I’m very suspicious of the placement of some of those mountain ranges!! They didn’t look at all random to me! Alex was almost unreachable behind his mountains! Even cavalry went through there slowly!

Alex had wiped out Gandhi earlier on – I met Gandhi just time to do a couple of tech trades with him before Alex wiped him out. Alex kept a couple of Indian cities, but razed several as well. This opened up wide spaces for the barbarians to spawn and though they had almost zero impact on my early game because of the west edge of the map, sea on the south, and close neighbours, they barbs certainly played a significant part later on. I captured quite a few barb cities, and killed lots and lots of barb macemen later in the game. However when you have cavalry even raging barb macemen is no big deal.

I was surprised at the slow pace of AI teching, but my armies might have had something to do with that!!

Early builds in Washington were: workboat, archer, archer, settler (whipped), archer, archer, worker (whipped), settler (chopped)

Early techs: Hunting, archery, Mining, BW, horse back riding, pottery (Economy needed it at that point!), writing, alphabet, then a little tech trading, but not as much as I wanted because of cranky AI’s.

There are a few other details of the early game which you can see in my first spoiler post.

Some major event I noted during the game:
4000BC Settle in place
3680BC Buddhism founded far away (turned out to be Monty)
3600BC Hinduism founded far away (turned out to be Gandhi)
3160BC Met Napoleon to the east, Bismarck scout arrives from the north
2880BC Judaism founded far away (turned out to be Gandhi)
2800BC Popped AH from a hut!
1760BC Stonehenge built faraway
700BC Pyramids built far away
675BC Took Chinook (Barb city) next to nearest copper
425BC Monty declares on me
375BC Confucianism founded far away (turned out to be Qin Shi Huang)
375BC Oracle built far away (Qin Shi Huang)
50AD Peace with Monty
350AD Taoism founded far away (turned out to be Qin Shi Huang)
350AD Restart war with Monty
540AD Christianity founded far away
560AD Peace with Monty
640AD I finish hanging Gardens
660AD Parthenon built far away
720AD Declare on Napoleon
780AD Great Library built far away
1050AD Peace with Napoleon
Capturing barb cities, building for big war later
1440AD Declare on Bismarck
1540AD Islam founded far away
1565 Napoleon declares on me
1610AD A suicide cat attacking Berlin at 0.8% chance of success wins!!
1630AD Peace with Bismarck, declare war on Monty
1640AD I build Taj Mahal with GE, start GA
1700AD Declare war on Qin Shi Huan
1760AD Monty destroyed
1775AD Qin Shi Huang destroyed
1785AD Declare war on Alex
1810AD Declare war on Bismarck again
1834AD Domination achieved with 83% of population, 67% of land.

 

[Shillen]

In my first spoiler I ended with my catapult/archer army marching on Berlin.

As was the case in other people's games, Bismarck had 9 archers sitting inside of Berlin (4 with city garrison promotions). By placing a couple catapults on flatlands (the AI doesn't seem to realize that certain units don't get defensive bonuses as they wouldn't attack my siege units on hills but they would on flatland) I baited Bismarck into sending one archer out on the offensive (which lost). In 640AD I had 10 catapults and 1 archer outside Berlin ready to attack. In a grand stroke of luck (and lovely collateral damage) I managed to win all 8 combats and took the city. In this game I really grew to love attacking purely with siege weapons.

So after capturing the Pyramids (as usual) I forgot to revolt to representation right away. It wasn't until 3 turns later that I remembered. Meanwhile I scouted out Bismarck's last two cities while my catapults were healing. After seeing that his other two cities were both on hills and not in great locations I decided to end the war there and come back for him later. Meanwhile I sent some catapults and macemen towards Paris. I declared war on Napoleon in 880AD (and made peace with Bismarck the same turn for some gold). I did not enjoy the same luck at Paris as I did at Berlin. I decided to attack right away with macemen because they had 68% chance to win while my catapults only had ~25% chance. I had poor luck and lost 3 macemen before capturing Paris. This would be the end of my attacking with non-siege weapons unless they had at least 90% odds for the rest of the game. Even if my siege weapons only have a 25% chance to win the first fight, after the first two fights all of the fights are near 100%. I would never lose more than 2 units to a single city again.

As I said Napoleon went down fairly quickly. I ended up making peace with him when he had one hill city left (since he was the first AI to alphabet) so I got alphabet, polytheism and calendar from him for peace. This took place in 1060AD.

My contacts came very slowly. I didn't meet my fourth civ until 960AD and surprisingly (or at least it's surprising in hindsight) that fourth civ was Alexander, even though I would later find out he's on the far eastern edge of the map. I did not meet Gandhi until 1160AD and Qin Shi Huang in 1220AD. When I met Gandhi he actually had more land than me and he had a tech lead. It was at this point that I realized my idea to not trade techs (which had worked so far) was no longer a good option. It was also at this point that I realized how unbelievably huge highlands maps are since I only had 7.07% of the land and I was already down to 50% science to remain positive gpt.

So this led me to a few conclusions. 1) Getting domination will take a damn long time, 2) I definitely needed cannons, 3) I had to improve my economy if I wanted to get those cannons and if I wanted to be able to dominate the world without getting all my units disbanded, and 4) Gandhi had to be my next target since he was getting out of control in territory and technology.

So I spent the next 4-500 years fixing my economy, building courthouses, markets, banks, etc. I think I got a little too much into builder mode as about 12 turns before learning Steel I noticed that I had a couple cities building libraries, which was completely absurd since I planned to turn research off after learning Steel anyway. Meanwhile I made a few trades with Gandhi to get some much-needed technologies and his world map so I wasn't attacking blindly anymore. Gandhi would remain the tech leader throughout this period even with the tech trades, though, but he was only up techs I didn't care about like Music and Philosophy.

I learned Steel in 1500AD. I immediately revolted to Police State and Theocracy (all my cities were Confucian) and turned research off. At this point I had 16 catapults and 10 macemen ready to be upgraded to cannons and grenadiers. By 1525AD I was geared up for war. Instead of going around Napoleon's two cities I decided to take him out on my way by. He was easily crushed by 1535AD. War with Gandhi began in 1545AD. Despite being the power leader Gandhi was a pushover, as I expected. I had already scouted his cities and as usual he only had 2-3 defenders per city. He had musketmen, but honestly half the time longbowmen are tougher to defeat than musketmen anyway. As long as he didn't get grenadiers I was all set.

I steamrolled through Gandhi's cities with little resistance. In fact, the resistance was so small and I was producing units so quickly that I decided to go after Qin Shi Huang at the same time. War was declared on Qin Shi Huang in 1580AD. Qin Shi Huang put up a bit better fight than Gandhi did but he still fell to the might of my cannons fairly quickly.

My unit count kept growing and the war front was getting so far away that I decided I could go after Monte also (war declard in 1645AD). Monte, I was a bit more afraid of though, as I saw the large number of units he had, even though he was way behind in tech. The power chart is misleading because a civ with lots of weak units is actually tougher to kill than a civ with few powerful units. The first couple turns of war I decided to stay in my own borders and see what Monte sent at me. In those two turns he only sent 3 units into my borders which I easily killed. At this point my patience failed me and I decided to send my cannon stacks in. This was a fatal mistake. I had felt so little resistance attacking Gandhi and Qin that I had entirely stopped building grenadiers to cover my stacks with and I carelessly kept all my cannons stacked in the same square. As soon as I got my catapults into flat land (once again he would not attack them in the forest even though they don't receive defensive bonuses) Monte sent cat after cat after cat into my stack. He then picked off my weakend cannons with his war elephants, macemen and horse archers.

But even with his catapults bombarding, he was still incredibly lucky. I can't count how many fights he won with 25% odds or how many catapults of his retreated. He even attacked with a ~1.0 health catapult once and it still retreated. In the end Monte killed more of my units than all the other civs in the game combined. But my cannon hordes were endless and it was only a minor setback. I learned my lesson and spread out my cannons into smaller stacks so they were less vulnerable to his catapults and I also used the defensive terrain since I knew he was hesitant to attack my units on hills and in forests.

Gandhi was knocked down to 1 city in 1695AD (and I didn't know where it was) so I made peace with him for some technologies and gold. By 1700AD I began building settlers as I was still very far from the domination limit (only at 28.62%). By 1730 Qin Shi Huang was destroyed and I focused all my attention on Monte. I switched many more cities to build settlers as I was still only at 34.38% of the domination limit and I had more than enough cannons to handle Monte (108 cannons). In 1750AD I had Monte half defeated and I was still only at 42.67% of the land. I began to worry that I wouldn't have enough land without attacking Alex and that would delay my victory by quite a lot of turns as my cannons were nowhere near Alex's borders. Thankfully this was not the case. In 1785AD I conquered both Monte and Gandhi, leaving Alex as my only remaining rival. In 1790AD I triggered domination for 52254 points.

Some things I didn't mention:

1. Any cities that had the ability to grab more land (particularly mountain ranges) had theatres built/whipped and an artist hired (since I was in mercantilism ever since I learned banking).

2. The culture slider was kept at around 30% early in my conquering of Gandhi/Qin and raised up to 50% later, and then 100% in the late 1700s as I had a treasury of 7000 gold (-1000 gpt at 100% culture) and I wanted expansions. The war weariness was not a problem because of this, although it was quite high in the turns before making peace with Gandhi and the turns before destroying Qin Shi Huang.

3. I did a horrible job producing great people. I wanted to create a golden age for increased culture gain, but I managed to pull off 3 great engineers in a row (despite the last great engineer only having ~15% chance of spawning) so I never had 2 units to start a golden age with. Two of these engineers ended up just getting merged in Philadelphia (after sitting in my city for a while) and were a complete waste while the third was wasted on the national epic (when I ended up just getting another engineer out of th city anyway). So I really bungled that up.

4. Somewhere in there (early 1600s) I sent some cannons up to destroy Bismarck's last two cities.

5. It took 71 cities to get domination.

Overall I thought this game was extremely fun so my thanks go out to Ainwood for a great map/settings. I'm a builder at heart, so I'll be interested to see how the warmongers handled this map. I really have no idea if my date is good or not for a highlands map on normal speed. Regardless, I'm satisfied as I feel I did a good job considering my limited experience with warmongering.

Technologies:
660AD – Engineering
740AD – Monarchy
900AD – Feudalism
1060AD – Polytheism, Alphabet, Calendar
1070AD – Guilds
1160AD – Horseback Riding, Monotheism, Literature, Compass
1170AD – Optics, Theology
1210AD – Paper
1240AD – Drama
1290AD – Gunpowder
1310AD – Banking, Music
1390AD – Chemistry
1500AD – Steel
1695AD – Philosophy, Education
1720AD – Printing Press
1770AD – Replaceable Parts

Civics:
700AD – Representation
880AD – Pyramids captured by Barbarians – revert to Despotism
920AD – Berlin recaptured – revolt to representation again
1320AD – Mercantilism
1510AD – Police State, Theocracy

Wars:
250AD-880AD: Bismarck left with 2 cities
880AD-1060AD: Napoleon left with 1 lousy city
1525AD-1535AD: Napoleon destroyed
1545AD-1695AD: Gandhi left to one city
1580AD-1730AD: Qin Shi Huang destroyed
1605AD-1650AD: Bismarck destroyed
1645AD-1785AD: Montezuma destroyed
1775AD-1785AD: Gandhi destroyed

Great People:
1340AD – Prophet (merged)
1625AD – Engineer (sits around for ages)
1735AD – Another engineer-no golden age possible, use one engineer to build national epic in Philadelphia
1765AD – Another freaking engineer in Philadelphia with only like 15% odds, merge both engineers in Philly

 

[ainwood]

First post, first GOTM, first Monarch game
Won on my 3rd try. Decided to rush to the iron, since having no iron for cannons made me retire from my too first games.

Hi - welcome to CFC, and to the GOTM.

Unfortunately, you're not allowed to replay the game - you have to submit the first attempt. If you want to play through again, that's fine, but you can't submit the result. Please remember this for future games.

 

[Grampaw]

Goal- Conquest

Key Techs:
520AD- Machinery
540AD- Construction
1180AD- Guilds
1410AD- Liberalism taking Nationalism as free tech
1505AD- Military Tradition
1525AD- Gunpowder
1635AD- Steel
1836AD- Artillery

Bismarck
The first spoiler ended at 500AD, and I was on the verge of finishing research on Machinery, giving me Macemen. Germany had built 4 Wonders in Berlin (The Pyramids in 750BC, Colossus in 150BC, The Parthenon in 200AD, and Great Lighthouse in 450AD). After building 4 or 5 Macemen and 2 or 3 Catapults, I declared war on Bismarck, in order to take Berlin and get his 4 wonders there. I captured Frankfurt in 860AD, Munich in 960AD and Berlin in 1100AD. At this point I bogged down a bit, and had squandered my catapults, and the next German city to take was on a hill in the tundra defended by Longbowmen. Since I had what I wanted (The Pyramids), I made peace with Bismarck in 1180, and turned my face to the East.

Napoleon
I had taken the Iron resource from Napoleon earlier with culture only. After I had gone to war with Bismarck, Napoleon had declared on Gandhi (to the east) one turn later and their war ended at the same time as the US-German war. So the “French and Indian War” was from 820AD-1180AD. Napoleon was a little backward, tech-wise, but I waited until I had a few Knights and Catapults before declaring in 1505AD. I took his last city, Karachi, which he had taken from the Indians, in 1615.

Gandhi
I was just getting Cavalry by the time I was done with Napoleon and right on the border with Gandhi, who was close to me in tech. He was no match for the Cavalry, however, and by 1735 I had all but two of his cities. One was in the northeastern tundra, and another was the extreme south close to Montezuma. So I made peace with Gandhi and determined what to do next.

I thought that going after Montezuma would be a good thing right about then, but my Cavalry were mostly to the east, and I wanted to start the war with the Aztecs by a sea invasion. So, rather than moving my forces all the way back west, and then later east to go after Alex, I figured that declaring on Greece was the next step.

Alexander
I declared on Alex in 1755 and invaded with Cavalry and Cannon. I invaded both from his northern boundary, and also his southern flank. I took the last of Alex’s cities in 1816.
Rather than send newly constructed units from the Heroic Epic in New York all the way to the eastern front, I declared on Bismarck again in 1780 and finished him off in 1824.
While I was involved in those wars, Montezuma helped out by finishing off Gandhi and razing his remaining cities.

Montezuma
Monty had been my friend the entire game after I converted to his Buddhism religion and given him one clam which he had demanded. I traded with him often for techs and other resources. He fought barbarians and took their cities. He was at war with common enemies several times, and finished off Gandhi for me. He was also close to my borders, so he was a good final target. Unfortunately, by the time I was about to invade, he had Riflemen, and I had Cavalry and Cannon. So… I delayed my invasion until after I had researched Artillery in 1836. I declared war in 1842. I had 4 Galleons and shuttled my units across the small sea. Monty’s Riflemen made me soften up each city substantially with Artillery before the Cavalry could do much, so the going was a bit slow. China was down to 2 cities for most of the game due to Barbarians and unfriendly neighbors. I waited until during the Aztec war before invading them, which I did in 1874 and finished them off in 1888. I finished off Montezuma in 1902.

Final Score: Conquest Victory, 1902AD, 41122 points.

 

[thundermonkey]

Lucky for you Monty was your friend, shorty after this, he took me out of domination chances with his elephants. Actually, everyone attacked me all game except the farthest nations, china and rome who were busy taking out the third.

 

[Snetsinger]

I'm not a fan of maps with tons of land, I'm not ready to commit the time it take s for military victories.
I started this GOTM with the idea of attempting a military win, I was able to conquor germany ealy which gave me a really nice bottle neck to protect my lands. But after my war with germany things quickly went down hill. I'm not able to make friends very easily because everyone is upset about germany, so I'm not popular on the diplomatic screne. figured as much with aggressive opponents, what surpirsed me is that everyone else was atleast pleaed with each other and most where friendly. I was prettty much stuck outside the trading circle, Then monty attacks, I repel his first attack. but then come way too many horse archers for me to handle even though my military was more advanced. My army is wipped out but i was able to bribe him off with some techs before losing cities. But then napolean wants some action and invades, he's comparable in tech level and his damn muskateers break through my bottle neck and all is lost, I retired my game at this point with no shot a diplomacy win since the rest of the world loved each other.

 

[podraza]

This was my first GOTM, first highlands map, first monarch game, first time with FDR, and first time I played a whole game without iron. I won the Space Race in 2004.

I decided early to try for space race, thinking domination or conquest would be too challenging with the huge amount of territory and raging barbs. So I warred just enough to get the space needed to gain the tech lead and sail to victory.

Fought Bismarck first and early. Secured all of the land up the top left side of the screen. Fought Monty next, secured all of the land on the bottom left side of the screen. Fought Napoleon third and last, and only because he attacked me. Captured two of his cities, and actually did get iron. Though it was about 1950 when that happened. He took it back with culture.

All in all, I was happy to just to win. Oh yeah, Adventurer class. Next time I'll try the standard setting.

 

[JerichoHill]

Domination Victory : 1940, Contender

Never met Gandhi. Barely met Qin.

Basically did as Shillen did, reigned hell with cannons and cavalry. I want to say that the bottlenecks were very interesting in this game, and that you had to be at a certain point or I imagine warfare would be sluggish.

However, since a computer problem caused me to replay a critical series of turns (and these turns were much better the 2nd time through, despite my manuveuring the same way), my game is not submitable.


However,

 

[culdeus]

I tell you what. Put us where Napolean started and I don't think this game is winnable. For raging barbs he had the worst start I can imagine. All that land to the north and west of him totally un-busted. I took out Nappy first because he declared war on me and walked over him, but then had to deal with an axe or sword every turn which meant I had to have a maceman in every city.

Monte had it the easiest, but I think the way to crack monte was a two headed assault from the sea and down the barbarian coast. It only takes about two galleys to make a pretty big splash on him.

I'm not finished, but I restarted anyways so who cares at this point.

Did the domination people (which I think I'll do) move the capital to Paris or some Napolean city? Probably a good idea right?

 

[ungy]

contender--space 1882 score 31778

When I started I thought I would go dom, but when I saw how much land there was I thought it would take forever so I decided I'd try space--haven't played that in a while. Wasn't a much shorter RL game tho.

Settled in place and went for BW building WB, war, worker. Archery was next when no bronze. NY settled to work the 2 gold, corn. Went for SH as I thought culture would be important on this map but was beat in 1760.

Little trouble with barbs --some annoyance later on.

I always have difficulty with industrious leaders as I tend to build lots of wonders and then am much slower on the offensive--this game was no exception. I had cats for my first war--Napoleon. I chose him first as he would not give me OB and was worried he'd attack if I went for Bis--also my iron was on his border. War took longer than expected--he had a few ice cities that took a while to find. Same with next war --Bis.

The AI fought a lot and were hopelessly behind on tech. By delaying guilds a long time I was able to trade for it but that was my last trade. I was able to sell a lot of tech to the AI (most of it very cheap) and with that and a couple of trade missions I ran most of the late game at 100% tech.

Major mistakes:
1. I didn't scout the barb areas to the SE early enough--Monty beat me to a couple of good barb cities by a single turn, and I didn't settle a couple of good spots till really late.

2. My trade with Alex, Gandhi, Qin was disrupted by an AI war for about 30 turns before I woke up and sent a worker over to the China/India border to fix the road.

Built oracle and decided to build colosseus and lighthouse as it seemed like a reasonable amount of water--Gandhi built library early.

Monte DOW'd me about 6 turns before my ship.

My guess is it was a tough map for a really early anything--as usual I hope the good players will write spoilers.

 

[podraza]

I am new to GOTM, so I ask: are these maps random? Was it known ahead of time that we would not have easy access to copper or iron?

It may have been a mistake, but I choose not to war with Napolean over his iron. I really didn't want Napolean's territory (at first), I wanted Bismarck and Montezuma's, as it was easy to defend and insulated from the ragings barbs. And I figured that there could be no such thing as a limited war for the Iron. With Paris' cultural borders so close, a war with Napolean for iron would probably result in a total war to destroy him.

All of that is just to explain why I opted to live a metal-less existence for almost the entire game. If this weren't GOTM, I would have retired. But instead, I was forced to improvise, and I was shocked at how easy it was to be a military power with catapults and horse alone. In fact, I eventually gave up on the horse units, as they were getting killed off too easily by spears. I captured Montezuma's area south of Washington with nothing but stacks of city raiding catapults. Plenty of them died, but I had a constant supply rolling off the lines and crossing the galley ferry into his lands.

Not being able to build macemen or cannons, I had to use an army of Muskets and Catapults for quite a while. I really enjoyed using the Navy Seal units, they were quite strong against Napoleons cavalry hordes (he had TONS of them) and they looked cool to boot.

Anyway, this game was quite different from my usual Civ routine and I enjoyed it. But again, random map?

 

[Snetsinger]

I'm surprised that so many of you seemed to have played the game without access to iron. I was able to settle next to the Iron that was very close to Napolean with my 3rd or 4th city. Granted it was quite far from my borders but i wanted to secure iron and deny napolean that resource. Unfortunately a few turns after settling that city iron was discovered in the fat cross of my capital(I settled in place) If that had occurred first I would have settled a more productive area closer to home. But even with the iron, the armies of the other civ where just too numerous.