GOTM 13 - Final Spoiler

[orb]

Tempted back to Civ4 GOTM by the big Christmas game (I've been playing Warlords for a while now.) - And I end up with a spaceship loss to Peter in the year 2025. - There aren't enough "A"'s in my PC to describe the Aaaaaaaghhh. - I let out when lossing this game so I'll settle with the 7 above.

It was a loss so I'll keep it brief.

My plan...Use the spiritual nature of Isabella to gain cultural win. - Started well. - Founded Hinduism in Madrid and Jewdaism in Barcelona. - Settled Seville in the south near the marble, and used the Oracle to grab Theocracy.

a) to get Christianity (my third religion - for cathedrals later)
b) to get a useful trading tech as the AI's were nowhere near at that point
c) to have the potential of theocracy civic to give me a bonus incase aggressive AI's started a war with me.

So it was going well. 3 cities 3 religions. - My original plan had been to take out Peter to remove the threat, but when I didn't have horses I decided to pacify Peter by spreading the word to his people. - Peter became friendly towards me for most of the game. (Handy to have a friendly AI as I found When Monte attacked. - Peter joined in on my side and Monte's forces were quickly dispatched.)

Built my temples and cathedrals and turned up the culture slider after Nationalism (I think).

Unfortunately. - My cities weren't particularly balanced Culture wise. - Madrid and Barca raced ahead in culture. Madrid legendary in 1957, Barca 1987 (?), but poor Seville - my weakest city was way behind. - I had planned to supplement Seville with Great Artists, but they were few and far between. I think I got 2 or 3 in the whole game. - This was in fact very surprising for me as all my cities were loaded with Artist specialists and had about 50% chance of generating.

My last 5 great people were Engineer, Prophet (Saint useless), Prophet (Saint useless II), Merchant and Merchant. - The Merchants were great as they allowed me to pay my way out of a war with Gengis (as by this time I was behind in tech), and also fund my culture at 100%. - If any one of these 5 great people had been an artist I would have achieved my cultural win as my final culture rating in Seville was 70496 when Peter got the spaceship win. - Being this close is why I let out my elongated "Aaaaaaaghhh".

Anyway. - Good fun. - I'll try to find the time to play more of the Civ 4 GOTM's now.

By the way - Ainwood - I had a powercut in the year 1843 so had to use the autosave. - Luckilly it brought me back to the start of the turn I had just played so I just did the same thing again (sunk an Aztec Galleon off the coast of Barca.) - Hope the use of the autosave doesn't disqualify me from the game.

 

[Khalid]

Finally managed to come back to the game and finish it after xmas. Spainish conquistadors did a great job and Spain dominated the world in AD 1562, just when the people build the Taj Mahal in Madrid.

My first spoiler finished in 1 AD. Since then we had 3 wars with Peter, extorted sailing and math from the first two. However, he was not willing to give calendar, nor construction, so the third war meant Peter was no more in the world since AD 1106.

The problem which remained from Peter was my economy. I took too many of his cities and so my research raet suffered. I didn't research CoL, so I just had to wait. So it took al the way to around AD 750 when I discovered optics (I was still first to do so). Quickly built 3 caravels, load explorers and go to the new worlds. In about AD 1000 both islands were discovered. The agressive one was confu, Mansa, Hatty juda and gandhi budhist. The two islands didn't know each other, so I was doing business with both of them. Switched to no religion to boost the relation. Got many techs in trade. The problem was that everubody except gandhi already had feudalism. So i traded it to him.

I then took a break to decide which continet attack. And my decision was the northern with Hatty, Gandhi and Mansa. Only Mansa had significant power, Gandhi had pyramids and other wonders, Hatty also. So I traded guilds to the southern continet (they were upset with the other due to religion, so no reason to fear thay would trade it to my battlefield).

I researched guilds and started mass produce conquistadors. Didn't research civil service and theology and used pacifism and caste system to farm a scientist to research astronomy in AD 1200.

Next years were just building conquistadors (with barracks, vassalage, and later theocracy also) and a chain of galleons to move them across the ocean. War started in AD 1332 with gandhi. (He was not liked by Hatty and Mansa due to budhism, so no fear they will join the war). He was destroyed in AD 1418. I supported my conquistadors with catapults and later with some elephants.

War with Mansa started in AD 1430. First few turns I just destroyed his stacks, he moved towards my stacks, then started taking his cities. After that few turns, the game was decided, as I didn't lose many units, while his army was crushed. My conquistados parked on hills just managed to defend. I attacked Hatty in AD 1516, before I finished Mansa. The first cities of both of them were bombarded and catapulted first, but the later cities had been just taken by overwhelming number of conquistadors. The 60% cultural defenses didn't help them that much.

My whole invasion force totalled to 44 conquistadors (20 died), 19 catapults (15 died), 4 elephants and 3 medic explorers (survived). Most battles were done by combat 3 conquistadors, later with blitz promotion.

Later on I build settlers to grab the remaining land. I planned to shut research to finance the expansion, but I feraed I would need to upgrade to be able to win, so I was first to liberalism and took nationalism. I didn't ned it. Only Hatty managed to get 2 muskets in her last 2 cities and they were killed that turn. What helped was that Mansa completed versailles couple turns before I attacked him.

The date is not as good as I planned to be. The main reason is overexpansion towards Peter, which cut my research, so I won't be fastest this month.

 

[man-erg]

Spaceship loss to Peter, 2011.

Ended with around 2200 points. Not good, but then Warlord is around my normal difficulty level.

Started OK, founded Buddhism. My game went completely astray when trying to get to the Iron on the East coast. Barbarians built a city on it and I forgot to beeline to Catapult. Instead, trying to win the city by building about 12 archers and some warriors. Lost them all, which is a lot of production wasted in one turn

Eventually built catapults and elephants and got the Iron in 1172 AD. By which point Peter had totally taken over the top 3/4 of the island. I had 5 cities and had fallen to around 7th in points score. A terrible session, I'd really become fixated on taking this one barbarian city and ignored the 'big picture'.

Then followed centuries of gradual development, with Peter continually racing away further into the lead with Mansa and Gandhi next. I had good relations with all of these, no way was I going to declare war on anyone! My first war was a small, mainly naval, war with Napolean around 1910.

By 1970 I was doing OK, just trying to amass as many points as possible as Peter was so far ahead, victory for him looked inevitable. Then.....Monty struck. He declared war and immediately landed a huge army of artillery and cavalry next to my main West coast city (Barcelona?). I thought my marines would be able to win the battle. Not so. The Aztecs razed the city, destroying many cultural achievements. I must admit to nuking them with my solitary ICBM and enjoyed it immensely. And being most annoyed when they captured my uranium just when I was going to nuke them some more.

This was only the start as soon France (again), Rome and The Mongols all declared war and landed troops. Eventually I fought them off without losing any more cities, but my land improvements (and my score) had been decimated.

Just had time to build a new city and start the recovery when Peter achieved his spaceship victory.

Quite an enjoyable game, although it was noticably more difficult and required much more concentration than my usual warlord/noble games. I learned that it's really bad to get sucked into continually pressing the 'end turn' button without regularly stopping and checking the whole game world. And also when you have Annoyed neighbours, be prepared for them to turn up with dozens of units at any time....

 

[Khalid]

I'm not sure if that always happens (2nd city gets 2nd religion) but it worked in my tests games and it worked here

I don't know the right formula, but it is somehow that your least powerful city gets the religion. So as you just founded the city, it is sure it will get it.

I didn't know how to work with some fundamental game principals. Any advice would be welcome:
1. maintenance and wars: when to raze, when to keep
2. great people: no clue at all, never had a golden age, only got 1 great prophet even with 2 religions
3. when to choose a victory condition, and how to avoid others when war cannot be stopped

1. The main reson is - what will the city bring to you and are you willing to pay the price (maintenance) for it?

Points to consider:
- land and pop for domination, keep when close to limit, if far away from the limit, better to raze and settle later.
- specific resource, need iron/bronze/horses/health/happy
- well developed city, which is able to pay for its maintenance cost
- good production city
- take a city and trade it to a nearby civ

2. Number of religions does not matter. The GPP/turn (great people points) matters. This you get by building wonders and assigning citizen as specialist.

3. At the beggining Especially if you want to achieve a fastest victory, you have to choose a victory condition in the beginning. This might sometimes change your initial production and research.

But the decision will be made after you explore the world, mainly your starting continent. Who are your neighbours (techers, warmongers). The sooner, the better. You can start guiding your research and production towards what you really need.

 

[Khalid]

South city discussion:

Plenty of people farmed the South floodplains. I cottaged them. Which solution is better?
I mined all the hills and worked them the whole game, and I used a couple scientists with the remaining food. Since I cottaged very soon, they became towns in the BCs/early ADs. Since my civ was too hammer rich, I think I should have cottaged the hills too.

Since I used slavery the whole game and since I did not use my GPs at all, I am quite satisfied with my South city management. What’s your view on this point?

I will join the discussion. I cottaged the FP and it was my 3rd city and it was also a bit of a production city. But then I realized that I didn't have a GP farm (I usually don't and that's my problem) and I ended without building NE. I farmed a GS (with caste system and pacifism) to use for astronomy, but got only 2 prophets from Oracle otherwise.

My points for considerations are:
1) for a fast victory, the GP might help more then cottages. It would be helpful to lightbulb Optics e.g.
2) Without civil service it is a problem to get a good GP farm in another city as there is little space to farm.

And one off-topic point. I understand that you didn't swap civis and that's ridiculous with a spiritual civ. After I got feudalism (from Oracle) I swaped slavery and serfdom almost every 5 turns, then used caste/pacifism, vassalage with theocracy and OR with bureaucracy all the other times. It was really helpfull.

 

[jesusin]

I understand that you didn't swap civis and that's ridiculous with a spiritual civ. After I got feudalism (from Oracle) I swaped slavery and serfdom almost every 5 turns, then used caste/pacifism, vassalage with theocracy and OR with bureaucracy all the other times. It was really helpfull.

Ummm ... total number of religion declarations: ZERO ...
Ummm... total number of Civics changes: FOUR ...
You are right, I didn't make a good use of my traits.
Thank you for pointing it out.

Now, you say you used OR, Theocracy and Pacifism. All of these are expensive civics that require your cities to share the same religion.
Do you think they are worth the price if only your capital and the odd city have a religion in it?
Or, if you invested hammers in missionaries, do you think it was worth it?

 

[Khalid]

Now, you say you used OR, Theocracy and Pacifism. All of these are expensive civics that require your cities to share the same religion.
Do you think they are worth the price if only your capital and the odd city have a religion in it?
Or, if you invested hammers in missionaries, do you think it was worth it?

I think I built only 2 misionaries, the other cities got the religion itself, the shrine probably helped too. I didn't do the cost/benefit analysis, but I think it was worth it. And also, when I didn't need a civic for 5 turns, I just switched out of it and when needed switched back.

I only used pacifism for 10 turns, which I needed to farm a scientist to lightbulb astronomy (my second GP).

And I appreciate theocracy. Since astronomy i spent most of the time in vassalage and theocracy, pumping out units with 8 xp. That means one succesfull attack and I have combat 3 conquistadors, which is a powerfull units. Since I captured Delhi i switched also to police state.

 

[Gnejs]

Challenger, Domination win 1853 AD, 4431, 29020

A quite unimpressive result, but then I made a whole bunch of mistakes this time.

Settled on the Ivory and found Peter pretty soon. Decided to quickly build a second city to claim the fish, pigs and rice to the north. This was planned to be a GP farm but when Iron also popped up there it became a great production site. At some stage I moved my capital there. Chopped a third settler directly after the second -but idiotically thought I didn't need to escort it all the way. Of course, it got eaten by a wolf.

Peter was very slow on expanding, perhaps because I stole a worker early. We coexisted peacefully for a while, but in the early ADs I decided I wanted his land. The war was basically a walkover, but left me with too many cities and great problems with maintenance. I captured some barbarian cities as well adding to the problem.

Research suffered. I focused on techs like currency etc to get the research rate up and entirely forgot that I would need optics and astronomy. When I finally got my caravels out and met the other ones I was at least 6-7 techs behind the peaceful guys. Ouch.

Was all lost? No, of course not. Sometimes the sword is mightier than the pen. Hatshepsut in particular was very weak so she became my first target. After capturing all egyptian cities on that continent I declared on Gandhi. He was slightly more difficult but soon was gone as well. Finally war on Mansa. This was actually much tougher since he had lots of advanced units. But my superior production won out in the end.

At this stage I was considering what victory to go for. I even dropped a stack on Napoleon after he had declared war on me. But my stack was immediately eradicated since he had scores of artillery in each of his cities. It would probably take nukes to seriously harm him. Instead I took the easy victory by going over the domination limit in 1853 AD. Two out of three continents was enough.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Ummm ... total number of religion declarations: ZERO ...
Ummm... total number of Civics changes: FOUR ...
You are right, I didn't make a good use of my traits.
Thank you for pointing it out.

Now, you say you used OR, Theocracy and Pacifism. All of these are expensive civics that require your cities to share the same religion.
Do you think they are worth the price if only your capital and the odd city have a religion in it?
Or, if you invested hammers in missionaries, do you think it was worth it?

Pacifism to a good approximation requires only your great person farm to have your state religion to be worth it. I've certainly made good use of pacifism in that kind of situation (not in GOTM13 but in other games) Theocracy may be useful if your state religion is only in one or two cities, if it happens that those cities are your main military cities. Ditto organized religion if the relevent cities are building important wonders, though I suspect that's going to be rarer.

 

[Erkon]

...
My conclusion is that our results are equally good
...
My interpretation of the data is that, since there was not a clear GPfarm somewhere else, the decision where to place the GPfarm was not easy and led to similar results.

I agree that eventually it didn't matter much which site was used for GP-farm. The only difference I can think of is the optimum city size. The South City could run one specialist / FP => 6 specialists in total, unless there is a happiness/health cap. A smaller city with a few high yield food resources doesn't have to be that large. So, it then depends on other factors such as war weariness and amount of resources.

 

[jesusin]

Pacifism to a good approximation requires only your great person farm to have your state religion to be worth it. I've certainly made good use of pacifism in that kind of situation (not in GOTM13 but in other games) Theocracy may be useful if your state religion is only in one or two cities, if it happens that those cities are your main military cities. Ditto organized religion if the relevent cities are building important wonders, though I suspect that's going to be rarer.

All that look like too sensible ideas to be coming from an upside-down person. What happened to your avatar?

I understand. The point of my question is that you enjoy the benefit in the most interesting city, but you have to pay the civic cost for all of your cities. That's why I asked if it was worth it. Everybody's opinion seems to be "yes". I'll have to try that.
Thank you everybody, you will end up transforming me into a good player.

 

[Khalid]

Pacifism to a good approximation requires only your great person farm to have your state religion to be worth it. I've certainly made good use of pacifism in that kind of situation (not in GOTM13 but in other games) Theocracy may be useful if your state religion is only in one or two cities, if it happens that those cities are your main military cities. Ditto organized religion if the relevent cities are building important wonders, though I suspect that's going to be rarer.

That's an interesting idea to run a civic just to boost a specific civic. I understand that pacifism helps only your GP farm, but i didn't think of the other civics in a similar manner.

I like spreading the religion to all cities and use the bonus, especially OR. As was written somewhere else, you get a free forge in every city and that's a huge bonus. You:
1) Build your forges at 25% less hammers (or 25% faster)
2) With OR and forge you build all buildings 50% faster (barracks)
3) You get excess hammers when whipping a building building (forge, barracks)
4) You have saved so far 25% of forge and barracks hammers - that's a free conquistador for every city producing military and if you switch to theocracy & vassalage - with 8xp. And you get them sooner.
5) As you have religion in your city, you don't have to build anything to pop bolders (additional bonus)

 

[Khalid]

I have another question in my mind.

The scenario had an interesting set up with 3 continents almost the same size. So you needed only 2 continents for a domination win and there was a great choice to make:

Do you attack the warmongers or the builders?

It seams that many did so and many did otherwise. So my question is:
1) What was the base for your decision?
2) Do you think the time factor is important? (E.g. in late game the warmongers were backward in tech, so they were an easy target etc.)
3) Did you caused wars between the AIs during the progress? (I did it in GOTM 12, but it only forced my ally to increase his power, so he was a harder opponent later. So I did nothing this time and it was easy except mansa)

All ideas appreciated.

 

[Mutineer]

I never count ties, could not be bothered, so I attack builders because there are easier and more advanced. If i win and it would not be enoght for domination my more advanced veteran army will make a quick job of warmonder.

 

[Erkon]

I have another question in my mind.

The scenario had an interesting set up with 3 continents almost the same size. So you needed only 2 continents for a domination win and there was a great choice to make:

Do you attack the warmongers or the builders?

I attacked the warmongers (France) since he was becoming very powerful and had highest score and had a tech lead. If I have a choice, I tend to attack the AI that poses the largest threat to me. I had bribed the Mongolians to attack the French and the Mongolians were loosing. It took me a lot of effort to vanquish the French, and I didn't want another similar war, so I shipped my units to the peacelovers.

In retrospect, I should have anticipated that the builders would overtake the French in tech, and become the main threat. I didn't play the game very focused. I am sure I could have cut my victory date several centuries if I had skipped the warmongers and gone directly towards the builders.

 

[RobertTheBruce]

I have another question in my mind.

The scenario had an interesting set up with 3 continents almost the same size. So you needed only 2 continents for a domination win and there was a great choice to make:

Do you attack the warmongers or the builders?

It seams that many did so and many did otherwise. So my question is:
1) What was the base for your decision?
2) Do you think the time factor is important? (E.g. in late game the warmongers were backward in tech, so they were an easy target etc.)
3) Did you caused wars between the AIs during the progress? (I did it in GOTM 12, but it only forced my ally to increase his power, so he was a harder opponent later. So I did nothing this time and it was easy except mansa)

All ideas appreciated.

I attacked the builders instead of the warmongers because their power was lower. Caesar had built a lot of wonders (Pyramids, Parthenon, and a few others) and was actually leading the builders in the tech race. He just kept popping scientists and lightbulbing. He had gunpowder and the builders didn't. I didn't have a large enough stack to attack Caesar quickly before he got Chemistry or Military Tradition and didn't want to bog down. Napoleon was down to a couple of cities but the other warmongers had big stacks of catapults waiting for an invasion force.

I didn't have a very big stack at the start of the war so attacking a builder who wouldn't effectively counterattack was an easy decision. A small force of superior units can quickly get overwhelmed by a large stack of catapults.

I took a few cities from Monty at the end of the game but Caesar had traded Chemistry for Military Tradition with him so the warmongers had up to date units when I invaded. My initial landing group was destoyed by Monty's catapults and cavalry. He didn't have enough catapults to handle the second wave but he could have stopped my initial force with catapults and knights if I had attacked him first.

I was the only civ with Astronomy when I attacked the first two builders and the warmongers shared a religion. There was no way I could get the AIs to fight anything other than a false war until it was too late to matter. I just switched all cities to unit production and 100% cash to run over the builders. Its not very subtle but I could quickly build an overwhelming number of units with CR2 grenadiers attacking longbows.

 

[da_Vinci]

I have another question in my mind.

Do you attack the warmongers or the builders?

All ideas appreciated.

I won't get a chance to post full details until perhaps Sunday, but after killing off Peter I went for Gandhi and Hatty, then since Musa was advanced and had a fair size army, went for Mongols who were weaker. Eventually as I was taking last Mongol city, Monte declared, but I had railroads built and lots of artillery so his amphibious landings were crushed, as were his cities soon after (this was about 1880).

1905 and my approach of taking the weak part of each continent got me only to 57% land Why? Culture from Rome, France, and Malinese was niping away at my land, flipping border cities, and I was still a few units behind in tech (they had tanks, gunships and battleships and I did not). They had large armies and navies, and my homeland was thinly defended.

Took me until 1941 to get military tech parity and enough troops to go after Musa for the last 3% of land. JC and Nappy were in a defensive pact, so even though Musa was #2 in score (and maybe power), I figured that he had fewer cities to restock troops from than the pair, and I had about 7 airports airlifting reinforcements onto his continent. Got the dom in 1949 with 60% of both land and pop.

Would have been better off going for all on one continent in retrospect, and paying more attention to culture in my new conquests to avoid city flips.

dV

 

[ewokimpi]

I have another question in my mind.

Do you attack the warmongers or the builders?

All ideas appreciated.

I attacked the builders because I'd lost the tech lead to them, through building too few cottages. Also, scouting showed they were weak, certainly when compared to the French.

Once started on taking the builder continents, I had to remain at war because of cultural pressure on newly captured cities. War with all three builders, in succession, was inevitable.

I finished up by taking the northern island, as I thought I needed it for domination.

I guarded against the warmongers with a picket line of caravels and a strike force of frigates. As it happened, the game ended before they got uppity.

 

[civ_steve]

My pacing for this game was just terrible! Result - took too long to put Peter in his place, and the large extended empire really took a toll on my economy! (Also, really blew it the first TWO times attacking and failing to take Moscow - lots of Axes bit the dust.)

After two round with Peter and finally capturing Moscow and Novgorod (Horses), I set about to learn COL. At 0 Science I was earning 10 gpt (Yikes!!). Eventually learned COL, and Courthouses started springing up everywhere; eventually recovered.

Continued on, totally taking over my continent. Starting to feel more in control. Suddenly foreign caravels are making contact. We've definitely fallen behind. By the time I get my Caravels over to the other continents, I find I'm behind by about 10 Techs. No problem! Looking for unique Techs to learn and trade I narrow the gap, and eventually become a Tech leader.

OK, I decide Conquest or Domination is out - let's go for a Space Victory (haven't tried a CIV space race yet.) Eventually launch in 1920 - comfortably ahead in Tech (due to having a lot more land and population than anybody else.) Gandhi even built the UN along the way, and I won every SG vote (but stayed away from the UN victory vote, just in case). A few minor wars were waged, which mainly got me most of the cities that the AI founded on my continent.

Very interesting, and I learned a lot about the later stages of the game.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

That's an interesting idea to run a civic just to boost a specific civic. I understand that pacifism helps only your GP farm, but i didn't think of the other civics in a similar manner.

You might find aspects of my GOTM14 final spoiler report interesting in that regard, whenever that thread opens ;-)