GOTM 11 Final Spoiler

Just a simple question : when can we expect to have the results? In early november or much later (since i can't see the results of the previous GTOM on the GTOM page)?

PS: i know it's a though job, so this message should not be considered as a criticism.
 
DynamicSpirit said:
OK, someone remind me never to go for domination on a no-sea map ever again. Sooo much land. Sooo many units towards the end of the game.

Made the same "mistake" as you. Thought it would never end... :eek:

The early game was very fun with interesting decisions to be made about barb handling, finding metals, and expansion. I founded in place, built second city soon near gold and a third, quite poor on resources but guarding the entrance to the barbarian wilderness to the east. Napoleon built Lyons next to the iron, so I promptly captured that city before he made use of the iron. Bismarck was brought down once I got cats. Later built the Heroic Epic there for a really great unit factory.

Had to rush my troops back south when Monty backstabbed me. His main force was war elephants and horse archers but I had enough spearmen to stop the initial assault. Ferried my veterans from the German war down to Montys heartland and proceeded to capture his major cities there.
At some point in this war I turned off research and built units almost exclusively.

I got the economy back in shape by building a bunch of courthouses, markets and banks so I started researching again, getting Knights in time for an assault on India (France was gone by this time) and later cavalry and grenadiers when running over the Chinese and finally Greece. In the end I had to stop production since I had more troops than I could ever spend. Didn't even bother healing my cavalries as there was a flood of new ones pouring over the map. I think I had close to 100 active cavalry at one point, and a bunch of grenadiers and cannon too.

Finally hit the domination limit in 1892 - when the Chinese had a single city on the edge of the map that I had let them keep. Base score 4583, final score 39340.


I think that the decisive point was when I stopped Montys mounted offensive and shipped my veteran troops into his land. Up until then it felt like a quite challenging game but after this it was just a question of letting the momentum of superior production slowly, very slowly, grind the opponents into dust... :)
 
Gnejs said:
The early game was very fun with interesting decisions to be made about barb handling, finding metals, and expansion. I founded in place, built second city soon near gold and a third, quite poor on resources but guarding the entrance to the barbarian wilderness to the east. Napoleon built Lyons next to the iron, so I promptly captured that city before he made use of the iron. Bismarck was brought down once I got cats. Later built the Heroic Epic there for a really great unit factory.

Had to rush my troops back south when Monty backstabbed me. His main force was war elephants and horse archers but I had enough spearmen to stop the initial assault. Ferried my veterans from the German war down to Montys heartland and proceeded to capture his major cities there.
At some point in this war I turned off research and built units almost exclusively.

Sounds quite similar to my experience, though I was expecting Monty's attack. A problem I had was I wanted the elephants - the ones some way south of the iron source, to help my war against Bismarck, and for general security (and it was pretty good land around there anyway). Trouble is because of the way the elephants were nestled with mountains around them, my city there blocked Monty's route to the East. I don't know what he was doing but from the troops passing by I guessed he was at war with a civ I hadn't yet met (most likely India). I tried to give him open borders so I didn't annoy him by blocking his passage but wouldn't agree to it. I took my elephants off to war with Bismarck, but wasn't at all surprised some time later when Monty declared on me. Unfortunately he very quickly took my elephant city, which meant he had elephants and I could no longer build anything more powerful than swordsmen, horse archers and cats, plus most of my military were miles away in Bismarck's land. So I spent ages building up a force of overwhelming numbers to take the elephant city back before I could really invade and clear the world of Monty.

What then went wrong was I got so focussed on managing the war that I totally forgot to do anything with my economy - until I suddenly noticed I was losing money on 0% research! Of course, other than near my capital and second city (near the gold north of the starting spot) I hadn't got round to building *any* cottages, which added to the problem of my cities being quite a way apart. Duhhhh! Sorting that out while still pursuing the Monty war took a long time, and I think is the main reason why my domination victory came so late. With hindsight I'd probably have done better to knock Monty down a bit - enough to make the threat from him manageable, perhaps take a bit out of Napoleon's empire because he had such great land (and otherwise my only iron was uncomfortably close to his borders), and then focus on the spacerace. But hey, isn't hindsight such a wonderful thing!
 
The barbarians shall not desecrate the lands of the Americans. Therefor, let arrows darken the sky.

The Pyramids shall not be possesed by Bismarck. He must die. So say Montezuma as well. And Bismarck dies.

The cities of the AI shall fall to the Barbarians. Shame on Napoelon, Montezuma and Alexander for not defending their citizens.

Napoleon must die. So says Alexander and so says Roosevelt and Montezuma. And Napoleon dies.

Ghandi must die. And he dies.

Alexander must die. And he dies.

Qin Shi Huang must die. And he dies.

Montezuma must die. And he dies.

Roosevelt must live. And he is victorius. After initial settlement and early expansion, the Americans lived in war most of the time. After major technology breakthrough's were achieved, research was repeatedly abandoned to fund the vast armies and maintain distant cities. The large lands imposed complex logistics on the commander. Had Roosevelt had more skills and ambition, the armies would have been used more effectively. 150 offensive units (cavalry/cannons/grenadiers) are too many to handle. Units at the front are very suitable for upgrading, since technology is then directly available against the enemy and the experienced troops become very competitive.

Great game, too large map for my taste.
 
BLubmuz said:
From 1800 to the end the game was more Command & Conquer (i suppose you know this RTS game) than Civ, it was fun, but too long to play, so again thanks to the Staff, but please, less land.

I have noticed that the more aggresive I play in the early/mid part of the game, the less C&C-like will it be in the end game part. As long as I am not too far behind in tech, this makes my games more enjoyable.
 
ainwood said:

GOTM 11 Final Spoiler



Reading requirements:
  1. Have completed & submitted your game.


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

An amusing but (sadly) probably necessary non-sequitur.

But the uranium reference leads me to the following question: anyone ever use nukes in GOTMs? I don't recall seeing their use in any spoilers I have read. Would that have sped up the outcome on this land-rich map?

dV
 
da_Vinci said:
anyone ever use nukes in GOTMs? I don't recall seeing their use in any spoilers I have read. Would that have sped up the outcome on this land-rich map?

dV

Not in this one for me. To use nukes you've got to tech that far, and then build the things before you can fire them. I had the game finished with cavalry before I got that far this time. In a couple of other GOTM's recently where I've achieved space race victories and therefore obviously teched far enough, I was too focussed on building a space ship before the other guys to think about building nukes and firing them. My hammers were need building space ship parts quicker!

I suppose if one faced significant military challenges early on in going for a military victory, you might get into a situation where nukes would be a handy way to finish it off. Nukes would certianly fly over all the mountian ranges in this map nice and quickly... :)
 
da_Vinci said:
But the uranium reference leads me to the following question: anyone ever use nukes in GOTMs? I don't recall seeing their use in any spoilers I have read. Would that have sped up the outcome on this land-rich map?

I used nukes in both GOTM9 and GOTM10. They are very useful to capture coastal cities (two nukes kills almost all units). They can also be used to stop the AI from building critical projects, since the production of a nuked city is very limited. Most important, nukes are very fun to use :)

Nukes speed up conquest games if a) there is a lot of water and/or b) the AI has lots of advanced units. In my GOTM11, neither was applicable.

I've posted notes from both games and described how I used Nukes.

GOTM 9
GOTM 10
 
Conquest, 1525AD, 90.000 score on contender.

Got the nice gold city up and running and pulled a Machinery slingshot. Meanwhile, the Stonehenge was built in Washington and together with the Oracle it didn't take long to pop a prophet and that one got me Civil Service in 300BC. Now I was ready to conquer the world... Not:( . After researching Iron Working I realised that no metal was present on my lands... Bummer. French was occupying the eastern iron spot so they had to go first. I also wanted a central spot on the map to localise every opponent and as an added bonus, Paris built the Pyramids for me:king: . From here on it was just a long march with mace and lobbers to every corner of the world.
No milking other than Hanging Gardens on the last turn, nice clean finish.

TDK
 
Well, the early game went pretty quickly. "This normal-speed game won't take too long", I thought. "I'll have plenty of time left this month to start on WOTM2". Heh. I feel like I could write a small book about my game (apologies for the length of this post)! For the most part, it was really good fun.

Having founded in place, I lost my starting warrior to a bear. That sucked as it reduced my early scouting. I didn't know what to expect from raging barbs, so I probably played too defensively. After all, the lie of the land was really helpful for setting up choke-points so there wasn't so great a need for units. I guess I figured it was better safe than sorry.

I put New York 2E of the Eastern gold. This was to become my military production powerhouse. Philadelphia went between the two lakes to the East, and was an average city.

More interesting were the next two cities. Both were founded near metals that other civs already had cities by. Napoleon had founded a city near the iron, but not close enough! I founded on the hill right by the iron and set about building cultural buildngs. Similarly, Bismarck had captured a barbarian city near to the bronze (a few squares south-west of the iron) so I again founded nearby and concentrated on culture. This last city, Atlanta, was a production mega-city in the late game, assisted by iron popping up in one of its mines. The cultural war wavered back and forth throughout the game, with control of the silk resources changing hands quite frequently. By the end of the game, Atlanta was 4th in the top cities list, and Bismarck's city, Olmec, was 5th.

I didn't feel I had enough cities, as the other civs (especially Montezuma) seemed to be grabbing cities from the barbarians left, right and centre. There wasn't really anywhere for me to expand, but I was hopeful I'd be able to grab one or two extra cities soon, somehow.

The religious aspect of the game was rather unusal. Montezuma's Buddhism was the only religion founded by the Western civs. Actually, that's not entirely true as he founded Islam too, but it never really spread. When I converted in 940AD, Monty, Bismarck and Napoleon already had it as their state religion. By keeping Monty's religion for the remainder of the game, giving him the odd tribute and joining in several of his wars, he was friendly for most of the game and never attacked me.

In 1190AD, Napoleon declared war on me, rather out of the blue. This was especially odd as I had quite a few troops near the iron whereas he didn't. I soon captured his nearby city, slogged my way up to Paris and captured that too. Wary of getting bogged down, I arranged a peace. This lasted the rest of the game (Napoleon was friendly for most of the game too... Buddhists of the world unite!).

Paris looked a good site for massive cottaging. Unfortunately, within a few turns, most of the nearby squares had gone back to French control. Once again, I concentrated on building culture in a city, going so far as to put the Hermitage there. By the end of the game, Paris was the third city in the top 5 list and its culture had spread so far that 3 nearby French cities were on the verge of revolting to join my empire.

I hit Liberalism in 1565AD (I've never seen such a slow tech pace) and took Nationalism as I had a great engineer sitting ready to build the Taj Mahal. Shortly afterwards, I declared war on Gandhi at Montezuma's request. From this point on, there were at least two civs at war for pretty much the rest of the game. It was quite phoney at first... until I dimly realised I could send the troops from the French war through Napoleon's lands and have a crack at the nearest Indian city. In the end I took a few cities from Gandhi, one of which was Shanghai(!), the Confucian holy city (I put Wall Street there), home of the Oracle and Stonehenge. Not too long after declaring peace, we all piled-in on Gandhi and his civ was dismembered. Montezuma's attention switched to Alexander and I joined in that war as well, though I had no intention of getting heavily involved.

At this point I was worried about happiness. I didn't have that many resources, and there wasn't that much opportunity for trading. So I started spreading the two new religions I now had access to and spread them to all my core cities so I could build extra temples.

Qin declared war on me... I assume he wanted Shanghai back. Sadly, he had riflemen, knights and cannon whilst I was fielding infantry, bombers and tanks. Despite this, it took a while to whittle down his ridiculous numbers before I could go on the offensive. I saw this would be a good opportunity to maintain good relations with Napoleon so I encouraged him to join in the war. He swept through China at the same time as Monty swept through Greece. Both weaker civs were destroyed in convincing fashion. I captured the Chinese capital as it was nearby and nabbed a couple of their other cities to secure a source of aluminium. I was getting worried that Montezuma would beat me to the stars (he'd completed the Apollo Program in 1965, the year before I did) and was thankful that I finally hooked up aluminium halfway through building the space elevator.

Fortunately, Monty seemed to lose his way in the tech tree (I'm guessing he valued modern armour too much) and I got to Fusion before he'd reached Fission. Though he'd popped out several spaceship parts, I knew he'd never be able to get to Fusion and build the SS Engine before I finished all my construction. The only worry was that someone might declare war and capture one of my vital cities.

Sure enough, with a few turns to go, Montezuma declared war.... on Bismarck. Of the four civs left, Otto was the only one not running Buddhism as a state religion (he'd switched to free religion... something I'd avoided due to the diplomatic situation). There wasn't enough time left in the game for anything significant to occur in the war, so I wasn't asked to pick sides.

Launched in 2010AD, for a paltry score of 8300. I was happy just to win, though.
 
Domination victory in 1730 for nearly 73k points.

This is my earliest dom date yet, even counting Epic games. I think it could have been a lot faster though. Here's what I think I should have done:

-Less theatres! This was the first build in most captured cities. It's okay that we didn't use the caste system for free artists, faster workers seemed more important, but all that border expansion is only necessary at the end (theatres did boost our score a little however...). Had I built military or workers first thing I'd have had a lot more knights in my life a lot sooner. I could've used the lux slider for the last several turns to expand our borders if we really needed it, or used caste system, or whatever...

-Get the Pyramids! China built those in Beijing in my game, and we never captured that town. Capturing it even 2/3 of the way through the game would've either sped up our science rate or else made it worthwhile to turn off science and spend our money on rushing. Definitely a missed opportunity. We spent the whole game as a Monarchy.

-Conquer East! Like just about everyone else, I was surprised at how large the map turned out to be. We took out Bismark's starting area fist, then fought a short war vs. Monty after he Dow'ed us. Half of France was next, then we just bull-dozed Monty and spent some time mopping up the remnants of Germany in the center north area. Had we concentrated on just driving east, to Beijing say (which also had the Sistene Chapel, Hagia Sofia, and others) our growth toward domination would have been a lot more convenient.

-Better Cottage Spamming Sooner! Once we got to the point where we were able to defend ourselves against the barbs and our neighbors, investing some time in a base economy would've paid off in significantly faster science and generally more options- assuming I'd played better otherwise. So, less military after the 'security point' in favor of extra workers. I'll try this next time...

Those are the main points anyway.

Rather than give the blow-by-blow account, I'll just add a few observations:

-There was an awful lot of unclaimed land in the SE section of the map. Lots of barbs and several barb towns... it was practically a barb civ down there. The struggle was simply in roading and settling the area, which considering the terrain turned out to be almost as difficult as conquering civs. Was anyone else's game like this? It seems like I had a stunted India to deal with as a result.

-We learned Guilds in 1250 AD and conquered most of the map with gobs of knights. We continued to research to Nationalism in 1640 (worth it) and on to Military Tradition, which turned out to be a waste of money, coming as it did 2 turns before the end of the game. Should've turned off science at Nationalism.
The Taj Mahal really came in handy at the end. We finished in a Golden Age which started at the exact moment our economy would've otherwise hopelessly crashed.

-In 1360 we got beat to Music and the free Artist. The tech was due in 1 turn, noone had it, but the game awarded the Artist to Ghandi anyway. We struggled to get another non-matching GP for our first GA, which didn't start until 1500AD. Obviously this wasn't ideal.

-To milk our score and increase the power of the whole empire we completed the Hanging Gardens in 1580. We had 40 towns at this point, I was anticipating a monster score boost, but all we got was about 7k. This was bad for morale.

Hmm, I'm trying to be concise here... Overall this was really a fun and challenging game. I didn't mind the lower difficulty one bit- I have so much to criticize about my game this time around I'm just left looking forward to another whirl next month, circumstances willing...
 
Wow! I bit off more than I could chew on this one. I thought with a regular speed game I could finish in a reasonable amount of RL time. I ended up with domination in 1961, score of ~22k.

At the end there I was just trying to get it over with. I'm trying my best to get in both GOTM and WOTM in one month, so far I have been unable to do it. I am an incurable domination player so hopefully the RL constraint will challenge me to branch out into cultural or space race victories.

In any case back to this GOTM... luckily Bismark built the pyramids and after capturing Berlin I was able to convert to police state. Probably my biggest mistake of the game came at this point where instead of DOWing on Napoleon right away, I concentrated on infrastructure. I lost many centuries of quality warring.

An interesting thing about this map was that I did not have copper until taking Germany's far northern cities and I didn't have iron until much later. After hooking up copper I could build macemen, so I took some nice chunks out of Monty and China before France DOW'd on me much later.

At this point I realized I didn't have iron because I couldn't build Cannons! Anyway at this point with cavalry it really didn't matter and I managed to slowly and painfully conquer the world in the 20th century. Not one of my best games, but hey! after submitting incomplete games the past two GOTMs I'll take it.

It will probably be my best score in a long time because the next couple W/GOTMs I will go for cultural victory and I am a complete novice at this. I've been reading tons of cultural spoilers and strategy, but I'll take any advice if anyone is offering it.
 
mushroomshirt said:
It will probably be my best score in a long time because the next couple W/GOTMs I will go for cultural victory and I am a complete novice at this. I've been reading tons of cultural spoilers and strategy, but I'll take any advice if anyone is offering it.

:mischief: Build some culture-generating buildings in 3 of your cities :mischief:
 
Challenger, no HOF mod, 6th attempt for Fastest Conquest. (Note: Know first four were unsuccessful.) This is my full spoiler, didn't do an earlier write-up.
Result: 1000AD Conquest Victory.

Pre-game assumptions: Barbs will be nasty. Lots of early warriors as stationary fog busters will delay barbarian hordes (idea by culdeas in pre-game discussion; gratze). Will try to accomplish win with mostly Horse Archers and if I can get to Machinery and find Iron, then Crossbowmen! I’ve tried to lay out more of my thought process at various points below. Hopefully it is useful to those who believe society should have stopped technology in the early Classical era and that anything else just isn’t Classy. :D

City builds: 4000BC Washington (in place); 2520 New York (5N/1E); 1920 Boston (3N/2W); 1240 Philadelphia (9N/3E); these were the only ones I built; I did capture 5 early, 3 late and razed 23 others

Initial construction in Washington: Worker, Warrior, start warrior until size 2 reached then start working two mined hills for: Settler (founds New York which starts immediately on a Settler), finish Warrior, Stonehenge, Workboat, Workboat

Early Worker: mined two hills for Washington, connected DC to NY via road, and put the NY pigs in a pasture. :sheep:

Cities: American 4, German 2, French 3 = 9 total; +3 captured from China/Greece on last two turns for 12 at finish; I wonder if the barbs have more :viking:

City internal construction: 4 Granaries, 9 Barracks, 9 Forges; the granaries were so that I could use whipping effectively, but I did almost no whipping this game so they were a waste of time :twitch:

Research: 3720 Mining, 3360 Wheel, 3320 BW (via GH), 2880 AH, 2600 Mysticism, 2400 Hunting, 2160 Archery, 1360 Horseback Riding, 1200 Pottery, 650 Metal Casting, 550 Writing, 300 Alphabet, 275 Sailing Masonry Iron-Working Meditation Polytheism, 250 Priesthood Monotheism; war trades: 100AD Monarchy, 375AD Math, 400AD Currency; would never get Machinery (315/1046 w/ 185 turns to go since forced to 10% soon after getting Alphabet)

Wonders: 2280BC Stonehenge in Washington (Moses added to Washington in 575BC); captured in 25BC the Pyramids which were built in 625BC in Berlin

Revolutions: only one in 25BC to Police State and Slavery :whipped:

Total units built: 3 Settlers, 4 Workers, 5 Work boats, 2 Galleys, 6 Warriors, 1 Archer, 7 Swordsmen, and 148 Horse Archers (71 HA units destroyed in the field). :salute:

Funny that: I didn’t do much exploration early, keeping my warriors close for fog busting along the axis of danger to N and E, so I didn’t find a plethora of GH’s like some, but was lucky enough to get Bronze Working from one and not much later had copper appear inside Washington’s influence. Some would have found this infinitely useful, but I didn’t hook up the copper soon (though the extra production was useful), as I wanted to build horse archers with only warriors in cities, not spearmen; nor did I build a single Axeman (with a chuckle of :evil: irony for those who were trying to go that route).

Wars:
0550BC-0275BC vs French
I decide to go after France first as Stonehenge shows I’m on the West center with LOTS of land to the East. At this point I know Bismark, Napoleon, Montezuma and Ghandi (Ghandi doesn’t know B or N and Napoleon doesn’t know M or G). I had seen Ghandi across the water in Mont’s territory. Since I haven’t been exploring much I’m using this type of info to SWAG their locations. At this point I have 4 barracks, a granary and a forge. I’m building 3 forges and a granary; after the cities have all three, they will be military machines. When I declare war I see Napoleon has 3 total cities in the trading screen (capital + two). I have 6 warriors and 6 HA, with the HA’s all headed for France, 4 on the border to start. By the end of the war I’ve captures Lyons and Paris, deciding to pass on Orleans for now as they were nice enough to offer me 3 techs for peace. :high5: Both cities will build Forge, then Barracks, then military. I’ve met China who has not met the Aztec. By the end of the war I’ve now constructed 14 HA with only 1 being killed. :goodjob:

Plan at this point: Based upon how I’ve met folks so far I make the following assumptions and plans. I want the Pyramids so I plan on heading North through Germany and the sweeping East (we know what happens to the second part of that plan). I suspect China is far to the West, so I send my HA near Orleans off to the East to find them and will eventually move spare workers to build a road to the East. I suspect the unknown Civ is in the West also. I suspect India is in the South based upon who they know, so after I have enough HA headed toward Germany I’ll set up a sweep across the water to destroy the Aztec and then through India (learn later that assumption was wrong). At this point I was thinking of eventually having three lines of advance across the board (North, Center, and South).

0150BC-0100AD vs Germany
Germany was better defended that I thought; they had 5 cities when I declared war. I captured 2 (including Berlin), razed 2, and left Cologne since they were nice enough to offer Monarchy so I could eventually hook up the wines :beer:, which I ended up never doing :(. My two new German cities will also build Forge/Barracks except the one needed Work Boats first.

0050AD-0375AD vs Aztec
0100AD-0400AD vs China

0275AD-0300AD mop-up vs French (destroyed)
As I get ready to open these conflicts, I’ve found China and India territory, having mapped out most of China, but not entering Indian territory much. I’ve met Greece and suspect they are on the other side of China, but don’t check. Based upon this I attack China thinking I can sweep through China, then Greece and hit India from the North and West. By 50AD I’ve actually built an Archer to protect former French territory and have constructed 32 HA’s with 24 still alive. I see the Aztec have 5 cities and China has 4 cities. I consider holding off on the Aztec, but I’ve seen a few Indian pieces down that way so I still suspect they must have cities spread down that way, so I go for it. Had I only mapped out India (and found Greece) instead of China I would have played this different, destroying the far opponents first. Ideally I would have done India and Greece, then sweep back for China and save Aztec for last. The raging barbs really played an effect, as I didn’t explore enough to fix my enemy locations before I started attacking. Tactically sound, but Strategically poor decisions. :sad:

0425AD-0640AD vs India (destroyed)
0520AD-0540AD mop-up vs Germany (destroyed)
0600AD-0620AD mop-up vs Aztec (destroyed)
As I prepare to attack the lead scorer (India), I still haven’t mapped them out or know where Greece is located yet. I left China with the lone Shanghai (with walls on a hill) and didn’t see Greece as I moved to the NE around the lake with a lone and killed by barbs HA; they were supposed to be there. I still haven’t explored in the far North, far West, or far South and Southwest. Since Greece didn’t know France or the Aztec, I can only suspect they are in the West. Woe is he who leaves Greece till last (when attacking with HA’s), which is what I’ve just done. I have a nice Eastern Road that bypassed Mycanian :viking: (9E/2N of Paris) to the south. I have 10 HA’s on the India border and a string of them lined across the Eastern Road, which would not have been good for caravans as the barbarians continuously harass me along this route. India has a whopping 7 cities, though Alexander jumps in unasked in 520AD. As I start my conflict with India I’ve built 5 Swordmen, all still alive and have 45 remaining HA’s of the 67 I’ve built.

0620AD-0980AD early declare vs China (destroyed)
0780AD-0980AD vs Greece (destroyed)
Well, I really only declare war against China so early again as I want to convince Greece to do so and send some of their units that way so I can attack them when a good portion of their forces are far, far away from their 6 cities. They end up sending at least 8 units that way, including 2 Phalanx, which was good not to have to face them in cities, though they did hurt some of my units still on their way to Greek territory. Since we became friends during our mutual struggle vs India, they agree that China must go as soon as India is destroyed in 0640AD. I wait to attack them until a good portion of our forces have bypased each other, as I head for my sneak attack and they head toward China, both of us using the same roads in opposite directions. The good news is that I can actually trade resources with Greece and see they don’t have copper hooked up. My first set of 4 HA’s use our open borders to find their northern iron mine. (Note: this is how I normally like to do things with much early exploring, but the darn raging barbs wouldn’t give me open borders.) Hoping it is their only source (which it was), I make that my first tactical goal, though I would find more Phalanx than I would have liked anyway. In 660AD I had over 2 dozen HA’s on their way to the Greek border with a line of them to follow. At this point I’d built 7 Swordmen, with only 3 surviving to this date. I also had a total of 61 of 95 HA’s remaining.

Death in the field: Saving Greece for last can make for some hurtful battles. It is always a little depressing to start a battle against a city with a Level 5 HA with Combat III and Shock (+25% vs melee) only to watch him be slaughtered by a Phalanx. Of course, the 0.9% chance of victory had nothing to do with it. Then the next HA with the same stats had 3.7% chance of victory and lay spew below the walls when all was said and done. Finally making some inroads to give the next attacker a 19% chance, but alas he would join his brethren in death. Then finally the Phalanx was hurt enough to deserve a rest so the Archers stepped up for the fray (the first one having City Garrison III). And yet another, and another, and another of my fine Horse Archers would be ground into dust. Of course, the city was still razed that turn :borg:. However, that is how one goes from 34 HA’s destroyed before attacking Greece to 71 HA’s destroyed afterwards. :eek:
 
A'AbarachAmadan said:
Challenger,
Result: 1000AD Conquest Victory.

Very impressive indeed! Congratulations.

A'AbarachAmadan said:
Research: 3720 Mining, 3360 Wheel, 3320 BW (via GH), 2880 AH, 2600 Mysticism, 2400 Hunting, 2160 Archery, 1360 Horseback Riding, 1200 Pottery, 650 Metal Casting, 550 Writing, 300 Alphabet, 275 Sailing Masonry Iron-Working Meditation Polytheism, 250 Priesthood Monotheism; war trades: 100AD Monarchy, 375AD Math, 400AD Currency; would never get Machinery (315/1046 w/ 185 turns to go since forced to 10% soon after getting Alphabet)

Archery so late. Wow. With raging barbs I dared not have only warriors to face archers on the borders. I suppose it's only a small window of risk though as you have horse archers almost immediately afterwards. In fact it seems you only studied archery in order to get horse archers, did you not? Once you have the HA's, the barbs would seem less threatening. It seems to me though that leaving yourself with only warriors for that long flirts with extinction while you're getting the HA's on line! I'd be interested to hear if you had any trouble with barb archers. I know that Germany expanding southwards, plus the sea to the south and map edge to the west significantly reduced the barb influx into the starting area, but all the same...

A'AbarachAmadan said:
Revolutions: only one in 25BC to Police State and Slavery :whipped:

Yikes. That's efficiency and sigle mindedness for you.

A'AbarachAmadan said:
Death in the field: Saving Greece for last can make for some hurtful battles. It is always a little depressing to start a battle against a city with a Level 5 HA with Combat III and Shock (+25% vs melee) only to watch him be slaughtered by a Phalanx.

:) This was my first thought when I first read you comment above about doing it with horse archers. I thought "What about spearmen?" then "And Greece will probably be last with those nasty phalanxes!" I guess it was a case of overwhelming numbers... Your success with this is very interesting though. I would never think that HA's alone could succeed so conclusively against fortified spearmen/phalanxes. However in reading your spoiler I learnt a couple of things: 1. Overwhelming numbers will win the day, you just need to be prepared to lose a few, and 2. Your trick of getting past the Greek forces in the field and having them off somewhere else to reduce what you found in the cities tickled my fancy. Good thinking!
 
Mad Professor said:
I'd be interested to hear if you had any trouble with barb archers. .

I had surprisingly little problems with barb archers and I wouldn't expect to be able to do this on most map types, but this map type with a lake to the south made it much more viable option with lots of fog busting. All my warriors that could get promoted and into a forest got Guerilla promotions. To the North I think I only faced one archer and I was on a hill/across river/fortified to win. Germany and I expanding toward each other made this a relative 'safe' area. To the East I positioned one warrior in the forest and permanently fortified him. I had another warrior on the hills. As soon as he saw anything he would run and hide in the forest. I don't think any archers bypassed them instead of attacking them and think there were only 2 total before I had HA. If they had been bypassed by archers I think my whole build cycle would have changed to pump out an archer, of course needing researched first. As my HA's were moving East they got some 'easy' promotions by killing archers near France, which had a plethora of them around. After taking the French cities I spent lots of time fighting off barbarians of all varieties (and even had problems up by Berlin since I razed everything to the north of it), but still had no more approach my core cities either. I almost lost Orleans to the barbs late in the game, having a single remaining HA defend against a Swordman and surviving with about 1 strength.

Mad Professor said:
Your trick of getting past the Greek forces in the field and having them off somewhere else to reduce what you found in the cities tickled my fancy.

Another thing I didn't mention above regarding attacking the Greeks. I sacrificed units, especially workers, to get some units to move out of their city. There were at least 4 Phalanx that left their city to capture a worker they could get for free (but then I'd attack the city while they were away) or kill a really injured HA. If I had a HA with 1-2 strength left, I'd move it next to the city and raze the road (or put it two away). Often a Phalanx or Archer would attack it, moving out of the city, making the city easier to destroy. Of course this wouldn't be quite as useful in Domination as they'd be returning (but still better out of the city), but is awesome for conquests.
 
A'AbarachAmadan said:
Another thing I didn't mention above regarding attacking the Greeks. I sacrificed units, especially workers, to get some units to move out of their city. There were at least 4 Phalanx that left their city to capture a worker they could get for free (but then I'd attack the city while they were away) or kill a really injured HA. If I had a HA with 1-2 strength left, I'd move it next to the city and raze the road (or put it two away). Often a Phalanx or Archer would attack it, moving out of the city, making the city easier to destroy. Of course this wouldn't be quite as useful in Domination as they'd be returning (but still better out of the city), but is awesome for conquests.

Yes. this works verywell for conquest. It would also be very useful for Domination because archers/longbows particularly are much more nasty when fortified in cities, so if you entice them out into the field, you can much more easily kill them there than in the city, making the city easier to take, even if you do want to keep it because you're going for domination. In these things the AI is really only As-I (atificial semi-intelligence!)
 
A'AbarachAmadan said:
Challenger
Result: 1000AD Conquest Victory.

Impressive! I got the impression that you decided on using horse archers before starting the game, and that you played the first 3000 years with that in mind. How much did you need to deviate from your original plan? And how confident were you that your strategy would work? Do you think you would have been even more succesful if you spent more productions early on for scouting units instead of settlers?

Thanks for the post. Very inspiring :-)
 
Erkon said:
I got the impression that you decided on using horse archers before starting the game, and that you played the first 3000 years with that in mind. How much did you need to deviate from your original plan?

Yes I did; I try to map out an overall strategy before I start. I always know what condition I'll be playing for, even if I don't end up getting there. If I'm forced to make a major change, I'll literally take hours (or more) planning for the next phase. As far as the HA plan, very little. I was hoping to get to Crossbowmen before my economy went to crap, but wasn't able to once the military machine started cranking. I did put some Swordsmen out there as soon as I saw spearmen in Aztec and German land, but didn't build many and certainly didn't want to try to cross the entire world with them, but would have if I needed to. If the Greek Phalanx had been too strong I would have slaughtered my HA's and maybe even 'surrendered' a couple cities to the barbarians to be able to get to Crossbowmen to march across the world. I think the AI in the new Warlords update will be a much more dangerous opponent. Building Stonehenge made it easier to keep the size of the map in mind by glancing at the global map.

Erkon said:
And how confident were you that your strategy would work?

At this level on a guaranteed 'closed' world, confident that if I made it through the early stages of barbarians I'd be successful in winning, though not confident how fast it would be. My only goal at this point is to eventually get a Fastest Conquest, so I'll take strategy risks that if they fail, then I'll just try something else the next game. Hence, no submission on games 8&9, as my initial strategy failed. Since I was in the process of moving at the time, I wimped out and didn't finish them, so big kudos to those who still finish and submit games they don't like. :goodjob: I feel like a clog for not finishing and sharing what I learned there as in Civ as in life we often learn more from failure than success.

Erkon said:
Do you think you would have been even more succesful if you spent more productions early on for scouting units instead of settlers?

I'd rather get my initial production going early and then explore after that. Almost always better to do that, especially with how early the raging barbs come I can't imagine using more than one unit to explore early. I just wanted to find city sites. In this case, I stopped exploring and brought the initial warrior back before the barbs would arrive for extra fog busting.

I do like to try to start exploring early enough that as soon as I get Alphabet I can trade with every potential trader.

Raging barbs were interesting and killed far more HA's than I thought Axemen should have been able to do. I made the assumption that if lots of barbs were coming from a direction that it was likely no civilization was in that direction. Turned out to be mostly true in this game. I remember one nasty experience was 4 Axemen together!! I had two HA's that pulled up next to them, but didn't realize there was more than 1 Axemen there, so needless to say my 2 HA's died, though my next set killed the weakened Axemen.

Also, I generally like to explore someone with my first HA's before attacking. If you can get open borders with someone, I like to send my first 1-2 HA's that reach their territory to explore it. This way if they have copper/iron then you can find it, place your initial military near it and destroy it so they can't build any more spearmen. I also use the resource trading screen to see what they currently have hooked up, which on a couple of occasions has given me a nasty surprise when they hook up a resource I assumed they didn't have. Same can apply for other resources as appropriate.

edit: should have been learn from failure
 
Congratulations to A'AbarachAmadan for a very impressive win. I didn't have much time to play this game so I decided against military and went space race. The game still took a long time. Teching was really slow. No other civ had electricity at game end (1943) even though I was selling techs to keep up my research. I played quickly and didn;t think enough about my cities. I had too much production and not enough research for a space race.

Big delay at the start: I saw the iron near Napoleon and he plopped a city by it. Sent chariots and razed Napoleon's city and built my own to get the iron, cows, rice. It was immediately razed by 3 barb axes and two barb archers. This set me back to two cities with only chariots. It took a long time for me to make up for this big loss of hammers.

I eventually cut back Napoleon to three cities but he was the come back king. I also reduced Bismark to 2 cities to take all the wonders (Pyramids, Parthenon, Great Lighthouse, Chichten Itza) in Berlin. Napoloen allied with Monty and destroyed Bismark and resettled his territory in the north. He joined the 'pick on Ghandi' crew and took most of Ghandi's cities. (Ghandi was at war with a combination of Qin, Alex, Monte, and Napoleon from 800ad until he was destroyed. I joined twice when it was clear Ghandi was doomed but never sent units.). Napoleon was backwards but as large as Alex at the end of the game.

Monte really screwed up my spacerace in the 1800s. I could see he was massing two huge stacks of cavalry near my borders and war was going to be inevitable. I let him declare and destroyed his stacks with infantry and artillery. He wouldn't end the war so I sent my own stacks to take a couple of cities. I didn't realize we had two more stacks of 15 cavalry plus cats each in his territory. His stacks suicidally attacked my infantry. My stacks were mauled and the damage was done. My war weariness immediately skyrocketed and Monte wouldn't speak to me until I took half his cities. A hundred wasted years with the culture slider at 40%. I didn't have enough commerce cities to tech quickly so my finish was very slow(1943).

I didn't trade many techs and Qin, Monte, and Napoleon wouldn't open borders for a long time. Choosing ghandi as a trading partner and not helping him militarily was a bad idea. I tried to stay on top of the power graph for the whole game because the whole world was at best annoyed with me which also slowed the domination. A lot of fighting for a peaceful attempt.
 
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