GOTM 120 Final Spoiler - 10th Anniversary Game

[DynamicSpirit]

GOTM 120 - Mao - Final Spoiler

,

So how did your game after 1AD go? Immortal level is difficult. I'm expecting that quite a few people will lose. Are you one of those, or did you overcome the odds and win? If so, - ummm - how????

Vanilla Civ4 became 10 years old a couple of weeks ago and this is the 10th anniversary game. Have you figured out how the map is related to the 10th anniversary? Remember, a special mention in the results goes to the first person to correctly figure it out and post in one of the spoilers. (Of course, that could be either spoiler, depending on whether that person has explored enough of the map before 1AD)

Reading Requirements

Stop! If you are participating in GOTM 120 then you MUST NOT read this thread unless

• You have submitted your entry

Posting Restrictions

• Do not post any savegame file from the game. Discussions and screenshots are fine but not actual games.

 

[nocho]

Besides the obvious 10 and plus-sign, I don't think I quite figured out the message. More busy with stomping the AI anyway.

Got to domination in 1500AD, one turn before I would have gotten my desired conquest. Unintentionally gained 6% land in the last turn so my margin wasn't quite safe enough. Oh well. Fun game, with nearly permanent war. Maybe should've gone with horse archers early on, but was tempted by elepults, that got down the Indians and an Incan city as HC DoWed me even before (well in the BCs still). 9 cities at 1AD, then fought the Americans. Sal became quite the powerhouse, so declared on him next, but was one unit short to get Medina, the wonder city with mids among others. That set me back a bit. Teched up to cavalry while throwing all old stuff against HC who succumbed under that pressure. From there took Sal with cavs (he actually had a few himself) and finally I came knocking for my old friend Julius, who was left with an icey city in the south with 15 cavs at the gates when the bells rang.

Thanks for the game. Thanks for 10 years of fun! Although I think I missed the first 6 years of them, can't really remember why.

 

[damnrunner]

Domination win in 1735.

Misclicked at start and ended up settling in place on the 2nd turn. Had 4 cities by 1000BC, copper hills to the north east , Horse/flood plains to the west, and iron/stone to the south.

Started warring in 400BC by attacking India with a stack of swords. Took one city (flood plains to the north) and tried for a second but it had something like 10 archers in it and I was not yet prepared for such losses. Inca also attacked me during the period. I moved to threaten an Inca city but after some heavy initial losses I took peace.

Peace treaties led to a fruitful round of tech trading.

Attacked the US around 0AD (now with xbows) and took 2 cities (maybe razed/took more, but took 2 good ones). Arabia joined my attack and also took some. Shared conflict and religion led to close relations with Arabia for the rest of the game.

Around 1000AD I attacked the Incas and Indians again. Took several Indian cities very quickly and then also declared war on the US to take their final city. At some point took peace with the Incas. By 1500 India and the US were wiped out. At the tail end of this round of fighting catapults and maces were in use.

Around the same time I started to see Arab cavalry - they were crazy advanced.

Around 1600 attacked Rome and shortly thereafter the Inca's again in a final push to wipe the both out leaving just myself and the Arabs. stated upgrading to grenadiers in middle of this and cannons at the very end.

Getting the domination win was close as Arabia had 30% of the land. When game ended I was running a lot of artists and gearing up for a possible war with the far more advanced Arabia (at time I had grenadiers to their rifles and cavalry but they must have been close to infantry and artillery). I was just barley behind the other civs for most of the game in terms of tech parity. Except for a brief period when I had swords and xbows and others were still mostly just using archers for defense.

Had some very unusual great person generation this game. 1st 2-3 were GEs I think. Used one of them to bulb Machinery which was extremely useful (I had also thought to try and use it for Great Library but was beat to it). I think I used 2nd for Engineering. Otherwise only had 1 scientist despite running a fair number of them. I used other great people for 2 golden ages and to culture bomb 2 cities (late game captured US and Roman cities that needed help against Arab culture).

Super fun and challenging game. No clue as to the map meaning.

 

[Xcalibrator]

1480 Conquest, with a 0.41% land margin to avoid Domination. Sal took Washington but I got Roosey's other 4 cities, then took Delhi and Bombay off Gandhi's hands. His other cities were pretty lame and far away so I took some tech for peace and then went after HC. Heal, back to finish off Gandhi, heal, finish off HC. Julius attacked just I was wrapping up HC, by which time I think I had cannon and grens, which JC was no match for. Nobody but me ever got as far as Gunpowder and cavs quickly captured Sal's last cities. I didn't make the best use of being Philosopical and the Nat'l Epic (in Delhi) but ran 2 GAs with Great People and 1 from the Taj. Thanks for the game, DS. Can't believe it's been 10 years. I joined the site around SGOTM 9 (?) and added GOTMs shortly thereafter. Thanks to all the admins, past and present, for your hard work. Best. Game. Evuh!

 

[Falabello]

Immortal level is difficult. I'm expecting that quite a few people will lose. Are you one of those, or did you overcome the odds and win?

Well, someone has to lose... Surely, being Immortal, I'm not the only one (or the only one to subbmit ) ...

But things goes well (I'm starting to deal with Immortal and who knows with Deity). I won the Indians and Incans with Cats. So won the Americans with Cannons. Then prepared the war with Artilleries. The choice was the Romans - we were almost equivalent in kind of units (he had some Machine Gun), but I had the numbers. I had prepared around 70 Artilleries with some Grens and Rifles, but 2 turns before I start my plan of attack he made a Defensive Pact with Sal . I did several demands (-10 diplo) to Julius waiting that he attacked me, but this idea didn't work, and Sal was already building the spaceship parts. Without what to do, I declared against Julius, waiting for the reaction from Sal, but he attacked me. With so many border to defend against Tanks, Marines and others, there was nothing to do, so I gave up.

I'm sure I would defeat the Romans without Sal's interference, and would be in the limit of Domination. That was a great progress in my games. Preparing more units in less time I can to better than this, but one step at a time !

About the message - no, no ! I imagine that be the numbers '10' and '20', the letter 'T', the signals '+' and 'x' and other two undefined. But I can't relate them all !

Thanks for one more game and for your effort. I'm relatively new here, but Congrats to all the administrators and players to maintain this great game for all of this time !!!

 

[Minou]

Space Victory in 1864

Things were mostly quite in the AD years. I launched a late Cavalry mission to capture the Spiral Minaret for the added gold. For the first time in years, I built the Space Elevator, which seemed to make sense to me in this version (I know most people don't build it in BTS). I killed an AI late to reduce the We Demand Emancipation penalty but I think they had not yet even reached it in retrospect so it was a little cruel.

The final phase could have been executed a bit better. I ran three Golden Ages and was hoping for the fourth requiring all 5 vanilla GP. In preparation, I had launched a very late war with Marines and Tanks to burn two cities and push back borders to boost food in a city I was hoping would pop the final Great Artist I needed. However, the war dragged a little too long and the resulting unhappiness was a small drag on the economy. In the end, it was all for nought as the city responsible for popping a Great Priest instead gave a Great Engineer (think it had Hagia Sophia polluting the pool). I also lost one turn when a forest to be chopped for speeding the last spaceship part did not flip to my culture in time.

Thanks to all the mapmakers and board administrators - 120 games is a great milestone! You're keeping Civ IV alive and well for many people.

 

[Daijin7]

Domination in 1720 and, I believe, the first GOTM where I got a six-digit score.

I was slowed down in the beginning be HC declaring war a few turns too early and Roosey getting my horses by culture for a few turns. One result was, I missed the GLib and my war against Gandhi (from whom I got two valuable cities (Delhi was my GP-Farm)) was late. Then when I got Washington, Saladin hat surrounded it by culture , so I needed to drop a G-Artist to keep it.

Everybody, except HC, was pleased with me the whole game - or until declared on them.

Saladin was ahead in tech the last third of the game, and then got much better in military, probably because he had infantry 15 turns before me. So I didn't risk to go to space, which had been my plan, but pushed borders for domination: Settling many tiny cities at the borders of the map, running artists and 80% culture. One turn before I got the last city of Julius - the only left civ besides Saladin - I won.

 

[craigholl]

Immortal is too much for me, so I took the Monarch save.

SIP and built a couple of cities before declaring on USA. Took most of their cities, then attacked Ghandi. Took most of his cities (Madras and Delhi were very nice indeed) and then was at peace. Was going to build my economy for a little bit before getting cannons but Saladin ruined it and attacked. Lost Washington to him. After getting peace I geared up a bit and attacked JC before I really wanted to, but he was busy at war with HC (my only friend) so it was quite advantageous. He was the first elimination. Then stabbed HC and took his remaining 6 cities. Then went and finished off the two northern cities of USA and Ghandi. Unfortunately that only left me with 60% of the map. Looking back I guess I should have planted some cities at the edges and got domination that way. But what fun is that! So I geared up for war against Saladin just after I got my factories. Almost didn't have enough units to survive the initial artillery/cavalry onslaught from him, but did manage my large border pretty well and then took three cities for the win.

 

[High King J.J.]

Didn't have the time to finish or retire. for those who did.
So what was the map mystery? Like I said, I await the revelation with mild interest.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

So what was the map mystery? Like I said, I await the revelation with mild interest.

The answer shall be revealed when the results are published, hopefully in the next couple of days.

The competition has now closed, so I assume everyone who played the game has had a chance to post their guesses for the answer. But, I have to say that none of the partial suggestions posted for the solution to how the map was related to the 10th anniversary of vanilla Civ have come anywhere near the correct answer. So, here is a clue to ponder - see if this leads anyone to the correct answer before the results are published:

Look at where the Roman empire started in this game. What would you see if you were playing this game as Caesar?

 

[Xcalibrator]

Sorry DS, I'm still baffled. The T-shaped water above Rome vaguely reminds me of a key, or the cutouts in a Roman helmet. I suspect the two approximately symmetrical straight rivers going north are significant but ... As for Rome at the center of the X: "All (watery) roads lead to Rome"? And maybe the two watery blobs to the right of the X are intended to make XII? 12 x 10 = 120? You're going to have to lead us by the hand here.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

lol, OK. I'll slightly refine the clue before I publish the results and give you the answer...

Spoiler :

Forget the T-shaped water. Imagine you're playing as Caesar. Imagine that you actually are Caesar. What do you see in the very early game, before you've even had time to explore enough to discover the T or the other rivers etc.?

 

[Daijin7]

Regarding the anniversary hint in the map:

Rome/Caesar was the player's civ in the very first Civ 4 GOTM. And the X around Rome in this map is the latin number for 10.

But this is still not much more than the 10, drawn by lakes, in this map. So I have still no idea what the puzzle really is.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Regarding the anniversary hint in the map:

Rome/Caesar was the player's civ in the very first Civ 4 GOTM. And the X around Rome in this map is the latin number for 10.

But this is still not much more than the 10, drawn by lakes, in this map. So I have still no idea what the puzzle really is.

That's a good start. I would say that recognizing that the X by Rome's start is the Latin for 10 is the key to figuring out the answer. The game results are now published, along with the actual answer.