GOTM 11 Final Spoiler

[Shillen]

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?

The maps are not random. They likely start out as a randomly generated map but the creator tweaks them a bit to encourage strategic thinking. This is pretty obvious when you look at the mountain ranges in GOTM11. As to whether we'll have access to iron or copper, no one knows except the creator. Sometimes they're in the fat cross, sometimes they're nowhere in sight. Unless you can read the creator's mind then the best you can do is guess. It's safe to say the creator will not tweak the map so much that the settings given in the pre-game and saves available threads become invalid for the map.

Oh, and welcome to the GOTM.

 

[JerichoHill]

I tell you what. Put us where Napolean started and I don't think this game is winnable. For raging
Did the domination people (which I think I'll do) move the capital to Paris or some Napolean city? Probably a good idea right?

Agreed. It was nice to have Bismarck all to ourselves as a future expansion project, but Nappy was mucked up, right there in the middle.

Yes, I moved my capital to the center of the map around 15-1600.

 

[JerichoHill]

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.

I don't feel iron was necessary. Since Bismarck wasn't going to discover a religion, I was pretty calm about taking him down with horse archers and catapults. After that, I'm looking at consolidation until cannons and cavalry, and that was that.

imho, iron was not necessary. In fact, it was fun to forgo bronze/iron for a very long time

 

[Shillen]

I didn't move my palace. I had no economy problems at all after my economy building phase in 1100-1500AD. Of course I may have moved it if I had thought to, but I didn't. I don't think it really would have affected my finish date if I had.

 

[mike p]

I held off on the Forbidden Palace until pretty late and built it to the northeast of Paris, which was pretty centrailized. Though I only kept two Chinese and two Indian cities, and only kept the last few Greek cities for points because I wouldn't have to waste my time managing them with conquest so close. But with Banking and Guilds my economy was strong enough to support my upkeep costs and still pick up a few more techs, though the research slider wasn't much of a priority once my Vassalage/Police State/Theocracy started pumping out Cavalry.

I'm not sure that Napoleon's start was unwinnable though. He was beating on Gandhi pretty good and was only a tech or two behind me when he declared on me. (Luckily, one of those techs was gunpowder, and I didn't have to deal with marauding musketeers.)

 

[Bart_civ]

This was my first GOTM and I went with the adventurer bonus. SpaceShip victory in 2011 AD, base score 4180 (final score 7266). Usually I play on marathon speed.

The plan was to go for Archery asap in order to handle the raging barbs, but take mining first so I could work the hills, survive until 0 AD and then decide what to shoot for. By the time i got mining, my 2 archers had found the 2 chokepoints.
This got me thinking and I figured I could hold the position and go for BW, hoping for some copper nearby. But no such luck.
Early build order: barracks -> switch to worker at size 2 -> warrior -> finish barracks -> workboat -> settler.

So, by 2680 BC I start producing archers, just after I whipped/chopped my first settler (Washington had reached size 4).
New York is founded in the north and has 1 gold, the pig and horse in its FC. I chose to have 3 hills instead of that second gold in the FC, because I wanted this to be my military production city. This worked out very well, because in the late game New York was producing 10 XP Modern Armor every 2 turns (without Ironworks).
In 1840 BC Stonehenge is built in a far away land, just 2 turns before I would have . I switch to the Oracle and whip it in 950 BC. I take COL and confucianisme is founded in New York and not Boston. This puzzles me: didn't I read somewhere that a religion is always founded in your last city?
In order to improve my relations with the AI, I trade COL for sailing and IW and give my extra clam to Monty. Shortly ater both Monty (founded judaism) and Biz convert to confucianisme, and so do I.
A quick note on the agressive AI setting and religion: despite every AI founding his own religion and eventually converting to it, the first inter-AI war started in 1450 AD. Yes, that's right, AD, not BC. What's up with that?

At 400 BC, I take a break and do some thinking: my (limited) scouting revealed that Biz is located to the north of me, has copper and is boxed in by a mountain range. Nappy holds the only iron in the area and is expanding rapidly. Monty is located to the south, but we're separated by a sea and mountains. I have 3 cities, no metals and a limited number of resources. I did spot the copper to the south later on, but it didn't matter anymore by then. Did I mention my poor scouting?
A quick note on the raging barbs: where are they?? Up until 0 AD I only saw three (3) of them. My chariot and foritified archers handled them with ease. Maybe my empire was so small at the time, they didn't bother...

Around this time I read a post from A'AbarachAmadan in the final spoier of GOTM10. This mentions the use of horse archers in early warring. Until then I never considered their use in that way. Normally I use axemen/swords to rush the nearest AI.
And so the Grand Strategy will be: build 10 horse archers, take the iron city from Nappy, cripple him in a way he won't bother me for a while, build maces and take out Biz. Now I was thinking about winning this game by Conquest/Domination.
In 25 BC I get my GP from the Oracle-points. A few turns later I take CS and switch to bureaucracy. In 540 AD my army is ready and I declare on Nappy. With only HA I quickly take the iron city and Paris. Then I sue for peace but get only some money for it. I read from other people that they got techs from peace deals. How do they do it? During the entire game none of the AI would ever give me any techs. At one time Biz would even give me a city rather than a tech.
In order to make sure Monty doesn't invade me from over the water, I always keep twice the number of his ships near my capitol.

By 920 AD I have met the other civs and start trading maps. This reveals a lot of land to be conquerred/settled. In the mean time, Biz builds the Pyramids, Chichen Itza and Colossus, while I get GL and GLighthouse. Building the National Epic in Washington screws up my GP-points and I get a GA instead of GS or GP. I beelined for Machinery and my maces are being produced at a nice pace, but just before I want to go after Biz, he upgrades his archers to longbowmen. So it takes me until 1250 AD to gather enough maces+cats to take him on.

All this time, Monty seems pre-occupied with taking barb cities and leaves me alone. In fact, Monty never gives me any trouble. I realized that I just had to keep him busy in order to keep him of my back. So, whenever possible, I gave him a few techs to go after Ghandi or Qin. By the way, Ghandi had been a good trading partner, but became way too tech-savy to my liking: he discovered Liberalism in 1440 AD first and had a good tech lead, until his neighbours started to pick him off.
By the early 1400's Biz is no more to the north of me, but he is still alive. Seems he build himself a galley and settled 2 cities to the north of Nappy, which means I'll have to go through Nappy to get to Biz some time later. I continue the military build up, including knights, and in 1545 AD, just before I want to finish the job, Nappy declares on me! The war started promising, but when I wanted to take his new capitol with my SoD, I hit a brick wall. Well, actually, a longbowman on a hill in a city with CD2. Looking at the power graph, I lost about 25% of my total value. That's how bad it went. By
the time I got my second wave into position, Nappy reinforced the city with 3 longbowmen, 1 cat, 2 maces and a crossbow. After a long and bloody war, I finally took out Nappy and Biz. But I lost all appetite for a Conquest/Domination victory.
The normal speed setting and difficult terrain counteracted my flanking moves (which I love to do).

Instead, I went for a SS. During the 1800's, Ghandi was finished by a combined assault of Monty, Alex and Qin (I might have had something to do with that ). After that, I sent Monty onto Qin and joined the fight to take over the cities Qin had settled near/between my land. This greatly reduced the length of border I had to defend later. Once Qin was defeated, I tried to set Alex upon Monty, but he refused: "we have enough on our hands". Well, you know what that means...
Luckily, by the time Alex declared on me (1937) my tech lead and production capacity (thank you 3GorgesDam) had grown to a level that I could match his cavalry with infantry and cannons with artillery. The rest of the game was all about building SS-parts and keeping up on the power graph. I must say, if Monty and Alex ever had decided to join forces on me, things could have turned ugly. But with the extra modifiers I got from warring with Monty, it didn't happen. I did settle one more city early 1900 to get aluminum, amid Monty's captured barb cities.
In 1992 I used one of my late GP and the GE from fusion to trigger a Golden Age. This allowed for a nice boost to the Space program and helped to get the necessary units (stealth bombers, modern armor) to take care of the latest attack from Alex (gunships, tanks, artillery).
I didn't bother to build the UN, because Alex and Monty liked each other more than they did me and I thought it could have lost the game that way.

Conclusion: This game felt slow on the tech front. The map was very nice with the mountain ranges and all. I think I need to do some work on my early game. But more so, I need to focus more on my goals. If I want to go for a military victory, I need to apply more resources to that goal and fight the builder habits.

 

[Mad Professor]

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

I built the Forbidden Palace over that way

 

[Sleepless]

Carrying on from my first post after waiting 500 years for Montes last city (Jewish holy city) to grow to size 2 I gave up and in 680ad Monte and the Jewish holy city were no more. Then came a period of 1100 years of calm for me as far as the AI was concerned. Lots of nice barb cities for me to take at my leisure with Monte gone. Razed a couple and rebuilt in better positions. I also noted the very slow teching of the AI which didn't help with limited opportunities for tech trading. It did have a couple of advantages notably in 960ad I found Taoism and could finally use the GP I had from building SH 2500 years earlier. Some notable dates:

1000 Ad Capture Cimmerian in the iron, rice cow position South of Nap.
Mainly because it was my first metal in the game.
1010 Ad Complete the Dai Miao (Taoist holy shrine). Stayed in paganism
but did convert Nap and Bis to Taoism. As Ghandi was the only one
who could trade techs with me (all the others to dumb ). I
stayed in paganism.
1160 Ad Finally research CS and convert to bureaucracy (usually go for an
Oracle or GP slingshot so this was a lot later than usual.
1310 Ad Build Hanging Gardens.
1380 Ad First to Liberalism adopt free speech and religion. Take Nationalism.
1560 Ad Build Taj Mahal
1570 Ad First to economics (100 years later still in decentralisation must
remember to check civics more often .
1730 Ad Adopt emancipation.
1745 Ad By now I've taken most of the barb cities in the middle and South of
the map so I decide to introduce Nap to my cavalry and war is
declared.
1750 Ad Chartres is captured.
1765 Ad Lose Chartres
1770 Ad Capture Paris (Pyramids and Notre Dame).
1775 Ad Recapture Chartres for the last time.
1775 Ad Etruscan captured (yet another barb city in the South).
1790 Ad Rheims captured.
1816 Ad Marseilles captured.
1818 Ad Orleans captured. Make peace as his other cities in snow line and
not worth the bother.
1822 Ad Build SoL (great wonder for this map).
1846 Ad Biz asks me to declare on Nap as I'm thinking about possible UN win
I declare with no intention of fighting but nothing to fear from Nap
except some war weariness.
1854 Ad Build Versailles in barb city to the South. FP went in Paris.
1866 Ad Make peace with Nap although Bis killed him off shortly after.
1898 Ad Complete Apollo programme.
1904 Ad Found Chicago to get aluminium. Couldn't believe I didnt have any
in my lands. Very good city site and was well developed by the
end though.
1906 Ad Start of modern wonder building era. Pentagon built.
1914 Ad Built Broadway.
1918 Ad Built Eiffel Tower.
1921 Ad Complete Kremlin and start second golden age.
1922 Ad Complete Rock n Roll.
1929 Ad Complete Hollywood.
1937 Ad Complete UN. Fail to get Bis to vote for me so space race victory
only real option. Ghandi was a strong second in my game all the
way through even though the AI picked on him all the time. Better
him than me though .
1939 Ad Space elevator built.
1940 Ad 3 Gorges Dam built.
1957 Ad Launch time and win space race. First time space win without
knowing flight . Didn't bother with med or fascism either.

Tech wise I was so far ahead, 16 in front of Ghandi who had just started his Apollo programme. It is hard having to research everything yourself though. Finally I really enjoyed the game and its good to win on my first GOTM .

 

[dowski]

Summary of first spoiler post: 500AD, 3 cities, good tech "buddy-buddy" with Monty, hardly know anything of the map, no metal.

As I mentioned in my first post, I had not been involved in any wars and things were too quiet... Well, that didn't last for too long. Monty, my bestest of friends brought 3 stacks of elephants, horse archers and axemen to my smallest city (Boston, on the coast between the two small lakes east of Washington). Despite the defense bonus provided by the Chichen Itza, my fortified archers couldn't hold out against his elephants. I was so close to Fuedalism too! He stormed into Boston in a couple turns and razed it.

His stacks then proceeded on to Washington. In the meantime, I picked up Feudalism and upgraded to Longbows. That was the end of his weak but initially successful assault. I called Biz in for a tech or something and he fought Monty for a long time after I made peace with him. A number of years later, I founded another city near the ruins of Boston (Philadelphia).

Screenshot of my 3! cities in 1360.

After losing Boston, I couldn't regain even tech parity with the AI civs. Thankfully, Monty now had Biz to hate, and after I signed open borders with him, he raised a number of Germany's cities. I promptly made use of the land and gained wine, crabs, more pigs, and wheat from it.

A screenshot of culture and cities from my civ's "golden" era in 1910.

Sometime around 1910, I decided to go for a diplomatic win (how's that for decisiveness). It's not like I had too many options at that point!

Long story short, I build the United Nations in ~2043 and lost by score to Napoleon in 2050.

It was a fun game even though it took forever. Things I have taken from the other spoilers that you guys wrote:

• I Should Have Scouted More (duh)
• An early landgrabbing war would have been good.
• Make armies, not wonders.

Anyhow, entertaining game at least. I think I'll try another next month.

dowski

 

[Adonias]

HEHE

The wierdest thing:
In my game (of which I'll post a spoiler soon) the pyramids weren't built until 1300AD by me

 

[Khalid]

America manage to kill everybody in 1870 AD for 37k points.

Summary of first spoiler:
Settled the starting area - 3 cities, 4th to the E and took the iron city from Napoleon with chariots. Build Oracle for MC, popped CS with prophet. Build parthenon, Gl and NE in the gold city, HE in horse city. Washington and the science city managed to get a tech lead.

Attacked monty in 700AD, used 2 galleys to move troops. Took his coast easily, then slowed to fight his army.

After monty it took some time to consolidate, heal and upgrade to maces. Made montys capital another science city, and managed to be in a huge tech lead since then forever. I decided to go conquest, but couldn't quit my build habits and so it took a very long time.

Somewher during that time i sent a chariot and found out about alex and ghandi. Ghandi was at war with alex, lost his holy city and was left only with 4 cities. Barbs took one later. He was well behind in techs, but i traded some with him and he managed to catch up later. I was surprised.

French were next on my list. They were crushed fast and at the end I upgraded to grenadiers and canons. I used liberalism to get steel. I supplied my front army with muskets to defent the french cities from barbs and continued to china.
By that time i was building only cavalry, which could get to the front fast enoughand started to gather another stack to attack germany. I shouldn't I gave up and left Quin with 1 city far NE, signed peace as my people were war weary and my army wounded. I destroyed indian by the way. It was a slight delay in progress.
I healed my army and attacked bismarc and alex at once. Bismarc was easy ad I crushed him fast. I had a huge amry and he was no match. He managed only one counter attack, which didn't slow me down. He used 4 cats on my stack and several muskets, but i was able to take with this stack his city the next turn.
Quin was destroyed on the way to alex. Alex was annoying. He had a lot of knights from his war with china. I asked him attacked and he used it to rise in power. So the war was long, he bothered my advancing stacks all the time, but was eventually destroyed in 1870AD. I had rifles prepared on for him and first artillery.

I learned how to war. I learned to make biggers stacks and to have more siege weapons in them. After the first cities I had to take a city in 2 turns, not 1. First to bombard, second to attack, due to lost siege weapons. I needed only a coulpe more of them and it would speed up the conquest by 15-20 turns.
First time, when i managed to have enough madeics with my stacks. Conquer a city, takes 3 turns to heal the wounded, while the stack takes the next city. Healed units gets back to the stack and medics move to the new city again.
I maanged to get nicely promoted units. I had a lot of level 4 or 5 units.

The biggest mistake was not researching railroads later. I thought i had enough units to fight Quin and alex, but it took long time. I was only 2 techs from railroads, but i just researched other things. If i could get reinforcements faster, alex won't be such a pain.

Thanks for a great GOTM and normal speed.

 

[uberfish]

In 500 AD having captured Bismarck's Pyramids I was under heavy attack from Napoleon and fought his HA forces off with my own HA, catapults and cheap spears while teching up. I quickly gained the upper hand on the field, but it was a long march to the nearest French city which I captured in 860. Believing Napoleon to be gassed as everything was quiet, I moved on Paris but was ambushed by 7 HA in an open tile right next to the city and had to retreat and wait for Maces.

I located the eastern civs by buying Gandhi's map, and only gained contact with China in 1100. China's attitude was consistently hostile.

Finished off Napoleon in 1300 and cottaged most of his lands and the grassland areas to the east. Built Oxford in 1340 and reached Military Tradition at this time. In my opinion war with China was inevitable so I might as well strike first and take some profit.

Took Democracy from Liberalism in 1470 and built Taj Mahal, then used a GE to speed SoL to completion in 1520. Attacked Qin with Cavalry in alliance with Monty in 1500 (getting the Aztecs to friendly.) Took all Qin's good cities by 1610 and made peace then went down the standard space race path. Apollo in 1810, Space Elevator in 1828, launch in 1852.

Not too happy with the finish date. Probably settling and cottaging the near east early would have worked out better than the early anti-German war that tied up a lot of resources in HA production. The Great Lighthouse did not work out too well either, for most of the game I only had Monty as trading partner.

I used final civics of representation, free speech, emancipation, mercantilism (because AIs stayed in this civic until very late) and organized religion.

 

[Dagnabit]

One of the unfortunate ones to anger 4 CIVs at the same time. Chugging along with tech parity in 1700's when I find myself (all most in unison) at war with Alex,Monty,Nappy and Biz whom I had almost got rid of a century earlier. Was OK until 20 Cavs from Alex took the lead -my muskits and cats were of no use and the end was near in 1850. Wait till next month!

dagnabit!

 

[Vynd]

My writeup through 500 AD ended with a treacherous sneak attack by Napoleon threatening my eastern-bottleneck city of Boston. Defended by a chariot and two archers, it held up to France’s Horse Archers better than I could have hoped. They lost. But they did take several Horse Archers with them, and damage the others. Napoleon sacked Boston.

While Boston was being put to the torch, I bribed my best buddy Montezuma to join the war on my side. He also traded me Ivory, enabling me to start working on some War Elephants. To further bolster my military, I started researching Feudalism for Longbows. The bulk of my meager army made it back south (from the recent war with Bismarck) in time to finish the remnants of the French army before they could cause any more damage.

This was the biggest setback of the game for me. I can see from the other writeups that I wasn’t the only one to underestimate the French menace. My response was probably something of an overreaction, however. After the initial attack no other French forces approached my borders, so going for Feudalism was a needless diversion from my Space Race plans.

I noticed in the Histograph that Napoleon’s culture had briefly taken a huge hit right around the time the war started, so I had hopes that someone else was at war with him. (The replay shows that he lost his top culture city to Barbarians then recaptured it.) I thought that my relatively small army of War Elephants and Horse Archers might be able to snatch his iron city, but it was too well defended. So I fell back to my borders and eventually secured peace without further fighting in 920 AD.

I left a blocking force along my eastern chokepoint and sent the rest of my army to attack Bismarck again, in 1000 AD. This war also went rather poorly. The outcome was never in doubt, but the Germans won enough long-odds battles that my initial assault on his Copper city floundered and had to wait on reinforcements. The end result was I captured Munich in 1210, but had to make peace without getting his two remaining cities in my area, to alleviate war weariness and deal with the barbarians that started appearing up north once Germany’ culture went poof. I finally finished off Bismarck in a third war during the late 1400s and early 1500s. I had to get Montezuma to declare on him to pick off a barbarian city Bismarck had managed to capture way off to the southeast.

Part of the reason my war with Bismarck took so long was because I was unwilling to totally commit to a war footing. Washington built the Colossus, and then the Hanging Gardens. I also couldn’t resist building the Parthenon, which was amazingly still available, in New York in 1200 AD. Washington produced two more Great Scientists prior to 1250AD, who established academies in Hamburg and New York. Most of the rest of my Great People for the rest of the game were Engineers, who I saved. This was about the time when I took the lead in the scoring for good. I moved my capital to New York in the 1300s, and built the Forbidden Palace in Berlin.

I built Atlanta on the ashes of Boston during the 1400s. And I crossed the northern sea and built Chicago on the peninsula near the second Whales in the 1500s. Other than the war with Bismarck’s remnants up north, this was the end of my expansion for awhile, and my part of the world was quiet for awhile. I concentrated on building up my defenses in case Napoleon got uppity again, and advancing my technology as fast as possible. Napoleon converted to Buddhism in the 1400s and I was finally able to send a scout east and meet Qin and Alexander in the mid-1500s. Up until then I was a bit concerned that my unknown opponents might be doing better technologically than I was, but they were as backwards as the rest of the world. Which is good, because they disliked me the whole game long.

Teching was slow going, in no small part because the AIs were backwards. Another factors was that it was difficult to get consistent contact and Open Borders, so trade routes were not what I’d hoped. I actually spent most of the second half of the game running Mercantilism.

I was first to Liberalism in 1270AD, and acquired Printing Press with it. After that things really started to drag because I had to research pretty much everything else myself. I was able to make a few tech trades with Montezuma and Gandhi (my mystery fourth early contact) but not much. One oddity was getting Calendar in trade in 1545AD. I hadn’t needed it and the AIs had refused to trade it to me for a millenium. The last meaningful trade I made was for Nationalism in 1830AD, by which time I was already working on Computers.

While I made my slow crawl towards space flight, I watched as the AIs finally got the upper hand over the barbarians. The middle portion of the map had been dominated by barbarians up until this point, but Napoleon, Montezuma, and Gandhi finally got the better of them. Napoleon benefited especially. Gandhi was second in points during this period and my only credible opponent in the Space Race. But he’d already lost a city to Alexander in the early ADs, and with no more Barbarians to distract them all of his warlike neighbors started picking him apart. I think he fought every AI at one point or another after 1700 and I joined one or two (without doing anything) wars to boost relations. He was eliminated in 1921.

Worried about access to late game resources, I built a couple more cities in the 1700s. One went near the Silks south of Napoleon, an area that had been a hotbed of barbarian activity and amazingly had gone unsettled up until then. The other went in the far north, north and east of the sea.

Alexander declared war on me in 1720AD and attacked with a scattering of Knights. They were easily repulsed by my Riflemen. Napoleon was more of a concern to me. His army was huge and the 1800s included some Grenadiers. When Napoleon made peace with Gandhi and French troops started showing up in large numbers on my border, I quickly bribed Napoleon to attack Qin. This worked almost too well. Napoleon captured several Chinese cities, including the Confucian shrine, converted away from Buddhism, and made peace with Qin. That messed up our relations pretty bad. By this point I was churning out Tanks and Bombers. But they proved unnecessary. I gave Napoleon Constitution, and within a few turns we were sharing his Favorite Civic. Later I bribed him to convert back to convert back to Buddhism, and we were Friends again.

With my huge tech lead I was able to build lots of wonders late in the game, including Broadway, Rock N Roll, the Pentagon, the Eiffel Tower, and Statue of Liberty. I’d saved up 5 Great Engineers over the course of the game. Once I had the Apollo Program underway I researched Plastics and Robotics, and used four of the Engineers to rush Three Gorges Dam and the Space Elevator in Washington. All three of these were finished by the early 1930s. With those huge boosts to my production I was able to produce spaceship parts faster than I could research techs to unlock new ones. I finished my ship and launched in 1979, for a score of 3412/9562.


Overall I really enjoyed this game, although my victory wasn’t particularly impressive. The map was different and fun, and the combination of the raging barbs and the aggressive civs made for a different experience than most games. The barbarians really impacted the other civs more than they did me. I think all of the AIs lost at least one city to them, although they usually recovered it pretty quickly. The AIs didn’t really get a handle on the barbs until they were well into the Middle Ages. And the barbs were still kicking right up until the end. They founded their last city in 1975.

 

[Meatbuster]

I had Bismarck as a punching bag, like most of you did. Unfortunately, Monty was annoying. It's always Monty.

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.

Ever thought of massing Horse Archers? I know I got horses pretty early.

I held off on the Forbidden Palace until pretty late and built it to the northeast of Paris, which was pretty centrailized.

I'm not sure that Napoleon's start was unwinnable though. He was beating on Gandhi pretty good and was only a tech or two behind me when he declared on me.

Yeah I built the FP in the city near the spices too, along with the IW.

In my game Napoleon didn't have a chance. He didn't have copper/iron so the barbs ran over his improvements. IF he build his second city south of Paris with the iron, I would've hard a hard time with him, but alas Horse Archers > Archers.

 

[AU_Armageddon]

Short write-up from too much civving.

Started out planning domination due to epic and all land. Germany planted dangerously close quite early and spotting how far the iron was out, had to decide iron or bismark. Felt I had lost a lot of time with the risk of going iron working and wished I had gone horseback riding instead. Would've snowballed to make the game much faster.

Anyway, decided Bismark instead of settling out for the iron based on the danger and cost of protecting such a city and cost of distance. Went Chariot mad making about 8 and ploughed through Bismark fairly quickly, completing horseback riding as I did. Put my tech to zero as soon as I got horseback riding and upgraded most of my chariots storming through Napoleon taking and keeping all of his cities. Ended up with a seriously large amount of workers from those 2 civs chopping absolutely tree possible, and did most of my science from the representation +3 science bonuses maintaining zero tech for probably a full half or more of the game.

I took one of Ghandi's capital from barbarians who were doing well with it, and India was finished off by Alexander soon after. Assaulted China next all but wiping him out.

Then spent some time consolidating and teching to cav. Here is a screeny of the empire at this time. As you can see, getting a nice tech rate despite 0% science:

As soon as I got cav, upgraded many vert knights and wiped out Monty in very short order, simultaneously taking more of CHina's cities and settling another 20 cities or so in the south-east taking every piece of land right up to Greeces borders. This combo was enough to finally give me the domination victory in 1780.

To be honest, I thought I had made a big mistake going for domination as I launched on Napoleon. Only then realised just how much bigger the map seemed than I had imagined. Worked out okay, but I am sure I would have made it 100 years sooner if only I went horseback riding before ironworking.

This one was one of the most fun GotMs for me to date

 

[culdeus]

Knowing what I know now here is what I would think would be the way to get a fast conquest victory.

-Start two cities asap
-Locate and settle either the iron or bronze to the East
-Convert Biz to confused and if needed convert to get him off your case
-CS Slingshot and Construction to start loading up cats and maces
-Try to bait Nappy into attacking by converting to confused and then roll on him with whipped up maces and cats. Raze all Nappy's cities.
-Wheel those guys around to open up a two front war on Monty from sea and from east to west.
-Keep Monty's cities and set up a maginot style chokepoint defense against barbs
- With Biz pinned in he should be deeply in last place at this point and easily walked over (he might slip a settler off to barbatopia so watch out)
-Reunite your stack in your east most city (the bronze or iron one) and then move out to the east

The keys seem to be to have a defenseable posisiton against barbs so that they are no longer a concern and enough high food cities to whip a massive SOD. Settling where Paris ends up and north or east of that pins you down into a barb-a-turn situation. Staying closer to home means you can bust all Monty's and Bizmark's territory and just set up a few forts here and there and pile up the bodies while your SOD cleans up in far off lands.

It ended up taking me all the way to the 1900s to get a conquest, but it was a struggle the whole way.

 

[Jastrow]

Now for something a little different... Diplo win for me, with my best friend Monty casting the vote that put me over the top! I was best buddies with him all game, ant +15 by the end of it. Only begative modifier was "-4 close borders" (I had two of his cities isolated to a single tile in the middle of my culture.

 

[Khalid]

then realised just how much bigger the map seemed than I had imagined.

It was not so hard to realise. I just looked on the victory conditions, when my first 4 cities were established, with 2 border expansions and it showed about 2.5% of land. Only then I realised how big the map was. That was the point when I decided to go conquest and not domination.

 

[da_Vinci]

Hi All,

Adventurer start. Domination victory 2023, with 88% of pop and 64% of land. Base score 6525; Civ 4’s “Normalized” score 12,539; GOTM score 10,656 after the 15% Adventurer penalty.

I’m happy with that for my third game beyond Noble (GOTM 10 where I got slaughtered, and a test game for GOTM 11 played to early AD were the first two). I have won against two teamed AI (a 2v1 unbalanced team game in hotseat) at Noble, so I have some skills beyond that level.

Executive summary: Settled 2E of the settler start (later founded Chicago 1W of settler start). New York at the horses and gold NW, Boston at the iron in the east. Adventurer archers scouted then fell back to hold the choke points. Barbs not a problem (fortified archers in terrain killed many).

Took a score lead at 575 BC and except for minor flip-flops, never lost it. Took a methodical, tortoise (rather that hare) approach to expanding a solid block of owned territory (so Barbs would only be a perimeter issue). Attacked Bis first (400 AD) but didn’t finish him until 1625. Nap attacked in 1220 so had to divert from Bis. Destroyed Nap in 1880. Used peace-war cycles to rebuild, end war weariness, and get goodies (tech or gold) in the deals.

Kept Mont happy by converting to Taoism (his religion) after I captured its Holy City from Bis (Munich), and we did a little trading. Traded most with Gandhi. He was a threat to overtake me in midgame, until Alex, Mont and Qin all took turns beating on him (on their own initiative). If they had all come after me, the outcome would have been quite different. When it became clear that Gandhi was in decline from the attacks, I started to give him stuff for almost nothing (including steel) so he could fight my surrogate battles against the other AI.

By 1880 I had a solid block of cities in the NW in a square: max area with min perimeter. Mini map looked like an American flag: stars in a field of blue. Had put a navy in the Caribbean (sea S of Wash) to keep Mont honest while killing Bis and Nap. Then Northern army attacked Qin, and a Southern army attacked Mont in his center (Sherman‘s march to the edge). After his home troops drew east, I “Inchon-ed” him S of Wash, razing his only city on the coast and taking Tlatelolco, his third-built city. After another peace intermission, Sherman and the Inchon invasion force converged on the SW corner.

Finished off Mont in 2005, Qin was done (except for one Barb city he had taken in the far SE corner) in 1999. The slow tortoise steamroller then ground up Alex for the late domination win.

Start Details:

Wash founded 3960, fish clams (Adv boat), sent two Adv archer scouting. Build worker, research mining.
3680 Finish mining, start hunting. Bud founded far away.
3480 Hunting discovered. Start archery. Worker built, start scout (I know, I know, but old habits die hard. Scout was pretty useless in this game. Are they ever useful at high levels?)
3400 met Bis scout; 3320 met Nap scout, 3280 first hill mined, started second mine.
3240 Finished archery, start AH (knew the pigs were there, and look for horses).
3120 Scout built, start warrior (for fog bust behind the archer screen, so wanted him fast)
3040 Nap adopts slavery.
3000 Warrior in Wash, start archer.
2920 Wash pop 3
2880 discover AH, start BW
2840 Met Mont and Gandhi
2800 Archer in Wash, start Wboat
2649 wboat done fish clams, start barracks
2520 Wash pop 4
2440 BW discovered, start wheel
2200 Wheel discovered, start pottery found Qin archer in 2160
1960 Judaism in India
1880 Setter in Washington, start archer
1840 Found NY at horse, pig, 2 gold. Start granary.
1680 Mysticism discovered, start IW. 1640 archer Wash, start ‘henge
1600 Horses pastured.
1440 ‘henge in Wash, start worker #2
1240 Granary in NY, start barracks
1200 IW discovered, see Iron in east. Worker done in Wash start settler
900 Settler in Wash, start chariot. Barracks NY, start chariot (need mobility to defend the iron) Mediation discovered, start priesthood (for Oracle).
800 Chariot DC, start Oracle. Chariot NY, start chariot. Found Boston 1 SW of the iron in the east. Rheims is 2 E of the iron, so with ‘henge for culture, I get and hold the iron. I garrison both Boston and the iron tile heavily.
575 oracle built in DC, get MC
550 See first Barb axemen
525 Iron is mined, start axeman in NY
475 Pyramids in Germany (Berlin)
425 Founded Philly 2 W of the wine (What was I thinking not going 1 NW of wine?)
350 Alphabet discovered. Did some tech trading
225 Discover monotheism. Moses, from henge/oracle, waiting for this and gets theology. Christianity in Philly, I convert. Next turn, I adopt slavery, and org religion.
75 BC Atlanta founded S of Boston, in fat cross range of the Bronze

Some things I forgot to note, such as when did I get HB ride?

275 AD finally found Chicago on coast W of DC (the point of the move 2 E at the start). It gets the corn and one clam for growth. Eventually put Colossus there (did not note when). Helped me navalize the Caribbean to keep Mont honest.

Besides ‘henge, Oracle and Col, I built Christian and Taoist shrines, captured ‘mids from Bis, and later captured several other wonders.

The rest I will tell with pictures:

The first spoiler had the 2280 BC fog bust and barb block shot, the 1 AD shot, and the 400 AD shot.

1500 AD shot (below) shows the spoils of short wars with Bis and Nap. Scores: Me 1121; Gandhi 1082; Alex 895; Mont 852; Qin 771; Bis 544 and Nap 470

1635 AD The end of Bismarck. One less direction to worry about. Note the scores, Gandhi has snuck ahead by 22 (one of those flip flops). This is where Alex, Qin and Mont start taking turns warring with him. By 1735 Alex is fighting him and I am 100 ahead. By 1800 Mont and Qin are fighting him, and I am 200 ahead of Gandhi, 300 ahead of Alex. I have chemistry (not the AI), and eventually give this to Gandhi to fight as my surrogate (and later steel).

1952 AD France is gone. Note how the minimap looks like an American flag in the NW corner (do I get the art award?). Against Mont, Sherman has marched to the edge and taken Tlaxcala, while the “Inchon” invasion has taken Tlatelolco (and raized a city NE of it).

1986 AD Mont homeland is mine (SW corner), and I’m taking a bite out of Qin. Also defending the Indian enclave from Alex as a reward for Gandhi being my stooge in fighting in the east.

2005 Mont is dead, and Qin might as well be (just that colony in the SE corner is left). I had acquired Delhi from Alex as price of peace earlier, and now basing Bomber Command there. AI never made air units, so it will be bombs away in Bombay. Three SODs (north, Delhi, and south) ready to finish off Alex). Artillery, tanks, SEALs and gunships.

2023 The end. Left Gandhi with a Vatican in my empire as his reward. (Had to put this one in a second post - see next). At the end I have 67 cities. Final military: 32 workers (building rails for mobility), 1 fighter, 12 bombers, 7 longbows and 12 spearmen (token garrisons back home), 33 artillery, 17 infantry, 24 SEALs, 26 SAM infantry (expecting planes, never came), 48 tanks, 35 gunships, 1 transport and 1 destroyer (sea S of DC).

First time I have used late 20th century weapons on offense in Civ 4. Before, I either won before them, (or won just defending with them), or lost TO them (like GOTM 10). So that part of GOTM 11 was fun.

Lessons for next time: Need to go on the offense sooner. Skip the scout. More chopping and whipping early.

Maybe skip ‘henge? I like the automatic culture in my early cities when I don’t have religion or leader-based culture. But would making more troops be a better choice?

Maybe skip the early granaries? Again, I see it as an early investment in growth, but maybe troops and an early conquest is the better way to “grow”.

Welcome any comments or advice.

Also, thanks to JericoHill for comments and advice (post mortem, of course, and the mortem is literal) on my GOTM 10 effort (sent via PM): put some of that into practice in GOTM 11 (still figuring out the mechanics of other parts of the advice). It definitely helped me win this one.

dV