GOTM #12 *Spoilers* Thread

[MPF]

Just submitted the game. Reached domination threshold around 1200AD. I have build nothing except the GL and some temples to expand my borders. Every big city was building horsemen/knights to get to the dom. limit as fast as possible, the small cities build impi's for support. Got about 7 leaders but then again I raged war from 2500BC to 1200AD so thats to be expected. In 1200AD only Persia (on a small island) and France left at that time. As this is a huge map I diceded to start and milk the game.

Except some temples i've nearly no city improvements in 1200AD and behind in tech so started a building and research frenzy to catch up with the French. Whiped them out when I got to modern tanks first and just left the Persians on their tiny island. Finished in 2050 with conquest and a stunning 7K score (the better players will probaly do better but I am very pleased).

MPF

 

[jhigham]

Well I got the UN victory in 1916. I could have had it earlier, but I didn't really think about it as an option. This was my first Monarch game, and my first Monarch win

A couple of other notes about the game. I didn't get my Golden Age until ~500AD (mostly intentionally, although I got lucky that my Impis weren't attacked earlier) which was really nice.

I left my last comment off at ~1500AD with a partial victory over India, and a new attack in the works. I got Tanks and rolled over India in three turns (could have been less but I miscounted some squares). I turned around quickly and took Babylon. I had my cities cranking out Infantry in order to prevent culture flips; I stationed the min necessary units in each city, but it meant having ~50 Infantry tied up with resistance duties until I wiped out the Babylonians.

I then rolled over Japan and also took a bottleneck city near the Persians. Japan took a lot of troops to prevent culture flips; I had to take defenders from my internal cities to manage it, but didn't do too bad. I didn't even need to use artillery, since my tanks ran over the Infantry.

The UN vote came up in early 1900, and for kicks I decided to hold the vote (at this point only france and persia left). France abstained and so it was a draw. I had been feeding France all sorts of goodies to have them keep Persia occupied, so I realized that I could pull off the diplo win fairly easily. I traded them some more resources, and started to build infrastructure. Persia got tanks a few turns before I won the victory, right about when I got modern armor. I researched synth fibers but didn't realize that I needed rocketry for the aluminum resource!

Fun game.

 

[Kemal]

Happy day!

I got my best start ever to a GotM this time as I found a settler in the southeastern village. Maybe there's something positive about being exploratious after all. Ulundi was quickly founded near the game southeast of Zimbabwe but my luck ran out quickly as the granary I started in it after producing a warrior for defence was pillaged by a conscript barbarian warrior 1 turn before completion.

I originally planned for both the Chinese and Indian lands to be assimilated in Zulu territory but I had to revise my plans when a lone spearman in Delhi massacred 5 vet. swordsmen before giving way to the Zulu army. So I decided to go for Republic and let the Chinese stay put in their pitiful jungle lands, hoping that coal would appear in hills in my territory. No leader had appeared so FP had to constructed brick-by-brick.

Tech research went ok but the trading of luxuries was heavily delayed by the AI, Hammurabi continuously sending my workers out of his lands when trying to connect to Babylon, and the other 3 AI empires (Japan, France, Persia) connecting to eachother but failing to build a harbor until about 780 AD. Also missed out on most wonders, getting none from the Ancient age and only 2 from the medieval age, Cops' and Newton's.

Another dissapointment after the development of steam power was that I had somehow managed to build my cities in such a manner that I missed the coveted pop-up "Our people want to build the Iron Works. Maybe we should!".

Well, at least there was some coal in my territory, I guess.

Just entered the Modern age and will probably finish before the week ends with a not so very high score.

 

[Iver-P]

Earlier I wrote:
Then came the quick and decisive end. France rode in from the east with cavelry. Pulled up to my eastern-most city and declared WAR. This was totally unprovoked.

I realize that I need to learn to play a better game. I'm in the process now of replaying with a more compact core. seems to be going better...

But what I am really curious about is that the French attacked without warning. I had no idea they were coming. I never denied requests for tribute, or did anything else (that I know of) to provoke them.

Was it just that Joan saw a sitting duck? Is there any way I could have been warned?

 

[willemvanoranje]

I had my golden age after the first victory of an impi over an indian warrior...don't know the exact date, but it can be tracked with the recording thing of course, since it was like 3-4, maybe 5-6 turns before I took the first Indian city.

 

[Aeson]

I finished up my game this morning. After upgrading to Knights, I started on the Babylonian conquest. It was doing well until the Persians and French decided to attack me, and I had to backtrack, leaving the Babs with a few cities, and not getting to hit the Japanese yet.

There were some very bloody Knight vs. Knight battles and then Cavalry vs. Cavalry for almost a 1000 years. The French, Japanese, and Persians each took their turns declaring war on me, I don't recall ever being the subject of so much attention from the AI in any other game. Must be the hatred barbarians have for culture.

I just kept building more and more cities, with Libraries and Temples, closing in on the culture goal. The fighting was actually quite fortunate, it kept the game from ever getting dull, and didn't really hamper my cultural efforts at all. All the units I was using were produced in cities which had already finished off all their cultural and financial improvements. About 1200AD I finally finished off the Japanese, and was able to make a lasting peace with the French and Persians. I like to think it was my 50 Cavalry at the bottleneck that finally made them see the light. Most of those Cavalry went back to build Temples and Libraries with their saddles... or something like that.

The rest of the game flew by, I was pulling in close to 600 gold per turn, rushing improvements with it. I think I did pretty well for trying for culture with a non-Religious, non-Scientific civ. Not close to the date the Babylonians, Egyptians, or Persians could hit for of course...

 

[Yndy]

IverP: I saw that behaviour a couple of times before. The AI saw you as a sitting duck. Joan had nowhere to expand hence build her military and looked for a target. I believe that when she accumulated enough military she attacked the sitting duck.

A question to confirm my theory (that could of course be totally wrong): Where the French fighting anyone before the attack. My guess it's no they haven't fought a long war in the past 20 - 40 turns.

 

[Ribannah]

Spent a half hour typing a full report on my game ...
... error message appears: too many images .... report is gone ....

 

[Kemal]

Ouch, bad luck Ribannah. Hope you'll still type a new report for us to read later.

I just finished and submitted my game, got a spaceship victory on - IMHO- a reasonably early date.
I read that there's no competition to fear from Aeson this time for the spaceship medal so who knows, maybe there's something in it for me.

 

[Zur]

Ribannah, happened to me too which was why i saved in txt file later as I played out the games. Word document is probably better because it allows word wrap without the sentence scrolling off the screen. the things we civfanatics have to live with...

 

[Shabbaman]

Just wanted to report that I started this weekend. It's my second game on monarch, but I'm on a roll. It's about 400 ad, I've annihilated the chinese, and I've got the Indians on their knees. I'm 3 techs behind though, but I've got a strong military with 20 swordsman, half of them elites (but then again, the babylonians just got knights), so I'm a bit disappointed at the lack of Great Leaders. I could use some of them, especially to get the workshop or the chapel...
I'm pretty confident that I'm gonna be the dominant civ once I switch to republic (once I've assimilated the indians), 'cause I've got over two times as much cities than the persians/babs/japs/french. So...

btw, I've got to admit that I reloaded once. About 600 bc, I didn't give in to persian demands. After a couple of turns, they allied with the whole world against me! Pretty dumb that I hadn't considered that... so I played again from about 1100 bc or something, and the whole thing didn't happen. As I'm playing this thing to learn from other players, and not for the ranking (damn near got 'fastest diplomatic victory in GOTM 10 though, must be pure luck) I don't feel guilty about it (especially since it's only my second monarch game) and I wasn't considering submission anyway, because of all this reload-tool crap.

Greetings!

 

[Ribannah]

Originally posted by Kemal
I read that there's no competition to fear from Aeson this time for the spaceship medal so who knows, maybe there's something in it for me.

I'm afraid that Aeson is competing with me this time.
I reached a cultural victory in 1768 AD for a score of 1387 points(that's OCC of course).
The most fun part was when I formed a line of workers to prevent China from being invaded. Shortly before, I had hooked up China with their second Coal so I could trade for it and build my railroads ...
Naturally I withdrew the human shield when I no longer needed Coal, and China was gone in 3 turns.

 

[Yndy]

Shabbaman, a piece of advice,

When AI declares war to you because of you not giving in to demands, him not willing to leave your territory or things like that, you should make allies asap. You should take into account that everybody will join them as millitary alliance cost is not that high.

The situation was fairly similar in my game, only difference being that I declared war to persians. What I did is, got japanese and french on my side in the same turn (it was easy with the japanese as they missed one of my techs). I often do grant backward civs with techs in exchange for alliances in the middle ages.

 

[Shabbaman]

@Yndy
Thanks. Usually I do that, but this time I think I just forgot to do it. Actually it didn't matter to me at first, 'cause I had build up my military for the chinese campaign. But they kept on coming...

 

[Kuhal]

I finished this weekend but I only started during the week. I normally go for space ship win or cultural because they are "peaceful" haha. Well this map and civ selection forced me to play differently and I was disappointed that I miscalculated the domination victory.

I reached victory quite late in 1710ad but I was really try to conquer everyone by about 1900. I had only 1.5 techs to learn to tanks and I thought I had time.

How can you tell if you are close to domination so it doesn't happen to me again?

This map was a good one for the agressive player. Most of the AI respect agression WHEN you have the forces to back them up.

Some things this map helped me to learn better:

Never fight on two fronts at once unless you are overwhelming one front or have rail.

Gain the strongest allies in order to destory the weaker civs. Then use the strong allies against each other - you end up with two strong civs left, hopefully you and another (for me the Persians were left - Chinese banished to the little island and worshiping me I think - haha). I was amazed at how easy it was to get the Babs to help destroy the Japanese, then the Persians to help me with the Babs, then the Persians to help with the French. World map is valuable when you have more than half the territory...

When at war with a strong civ, make any allies you canto distract the enemy. Hopefully he will be stretched across multiple fronts and this will make it easier.

Have a plan of conquest. No point attacking randomly. When invading a large civ, I go for ROP well in advance and position units on all their strategic resources and luxuries (2 per tile). For this you can use your oldest units as they will get destoryed pretty quickly if war erupts.

Bring your artillery to the city that will be most useful to you in the ensuing battle. When you are ready, declare war and use your shock troops (on the luxury/resource squares) to deny the enemy of these essential items. After a few round sof battle, they will not have any reinforcements available as all of their iron, coal, oil, rubber, horses, saltpeter etc are gone. Take the strategic city and then move on to the next.

Hmm that's all I can think of

 

[Yndy]

Kuhal,

You can use MapStat to avoid domination victory. I'ts right here at civfanatics in the download section.

You have to be careful still, it has a little error margin (i think), and watch for the cultural expansion of borders.

'My empire expanded 70 tiles in one turn and i got an unwanted domination victory also.

 

[Shabbaman]

Crap,

Couldn't you guys have told me before that impi's don't upgrade to pikemen? WTH am I supposed to do with all those wimpy hippies?
EDIT: Hmm, this doesn't look very constructive... But it's kinda frustrating. I've got the strongest military, but it consists of a large number of impi's and about fifteen swordsmen. I better keep those babylonians and japanese (who will get into their GA any time I guess) off my back...

 

[Aeson]

Impi upgrade to Musketmen. Their stats are better than Pikemen's IMO. The extra movement allows for a more fluid defense, they are cheaper to produce, and units can't retreat from them.

 

[Shabbaman]

Really? Well then, that's great! I'm happy that with PTW there's also an upgrade for swordsman. Thanks aeson!

 

[Quokka]

Has anyone else noticed the Ironworks is available alot more often since 1.29. In this GOTM I had 3 cities that could have built it and there were another 2 locations were it was possible if the cities had been placed corectly(one if you don't count Beijing).
I had a large break from Civ3, I had to change continents, and I just upgraded from from 1.17. Before this I had never had the Ironworks. Must say I like it this way better.

Wish I had had Mapstat for this game also, got a surprise Domination win one turn before getting MA for the first time.
Other firsts this game: Elite tank losing to Vet Spearman , Vet Immortal killing Vet Mech Inf.
Other than that I think my military worked the best it ever has in this game. Unfortunately the law of averages is evening things out in my tournament game right now.