GOTM 139 Persia - Final Spoiler - Game Over

[Più Freddo]

This is the thread where you tell us how you did - win, lose or retire.

Only read or post in this thread when your game is ended and successfully submitted.

 

[Ditch]

I think it's my first time attempting this victory condition; pleased to say I made it, but only just (1962). I almost lost it not noticing Ottomans creeping towards a domination victory so had to launch my first war to put them in their place (and then avoid the temptation to wipe them out and get my own domination vitory by mistake). I risked using my capital in the starting position to build (without the benefit of using Palace building between great wonders) but managed to get almost all of them after building Great Library: Many thanks for the coal and iron allowing Iron Works there too! Without it, I'm not sure I'd have made it.

 

[Lanzelot]

Many thanks for the coal and iron allowing Iron Works there too! Without it, I'm not sure I'd have made it.

You are welcome...

 

[greatbeyond]

I just barely made it with this one, 20K in 2017 with 100K scheduled for 2023 according to CivAssist2.

My 20K city was to the NW on the coast 2NW of the cows. Once I got production running it out produced every other city. One notable was that corruption during the early part of the game was terrible. It was the second city founded and no more than 6 tiles away from the capital, but I had to build a courthouse to get the production going. I even ended up building the Forbidden Palace there as soon as I could to keep corruption manageable. The result of course was that my conquered German lands never contributed much to efforts.

I was crippled early by the mass appearance of barbs from nowhere. It wouldn't have hurt so bad if I was expecting it but things had been so quiet. I approached the first of them with an Immortal only to have it spawn a fresh stack of Horsemen. From there it took quite an effort to clear things.

I went back to check the announcement to see what level of barbs there were but I didn't find any mention of it.

What hurt the worst was an early cascade of the early wonders and then later another cascade at the start of the Middle ages. Luckily I didn't end up loosing a massive amount of built up shields, but It set my 20K date way back.

OK, so here is my campaign to eliminate Great Leaders being able to rush wonders from contest games. With PTW Great Leaders able to rush any improvement, if you get a few Great Leaders it can speed up your 20K timeline immensely.

I will be interested to see what others experienced. As you can probably guess this campaign is driven by the fact that I got 1 Great Leader in 1965 AD. I spent most of the Ancient and Middle Ages at war with Germany to get a Great Leader only to see all my elite victories go for naught. As he was the only AI close enough to try and farm Great Leaders, I toyed with him as he wasn't any kind of a threat with no iron.

IIRC there is a chart showing the chances of getting a Great Leader.

 

[Lanzelot]

Hmm, I knew that it would be kind of a challenge to achieve 20K on this map, but was it really that bad?! (So far one attempt ended in 1962 AD and the other in 2017 AD...)

As to MGLs: I think that only an MGL-rushed wonder in the ancient age can make a significant difference to the 20K date. An MGL later on, like in the middle age, is only a nice bonus, which perhaps shaves off half a dozen turns from the final victory date, but not more. And in the ancient age it is usually impossible to generate an MGL, because you would need to concentrate all your early resource into your military instead of into the build-up of your 20K city! And this would throw your 20K victory further back than 1-2 early MGLs would be able to make up for...

So I think the MGL-factor isn't that big in a 20K game. What probably hurt you more, is your choice of a highly-corrupted location for the 20K city?! Even if you got it up to speed later on with courthouse and FP: it is the early shields that count most in a 20K game! You want to get temple, library and 1-2 wonders up as fast as possible, so that they can all benefit from the 1000 year bonus asap. For that reason I usually choose the capital or a city at distance 2-3. The closer the better. Distance 6 was certainly too far away.

 

[tR1cKy]

Well, since you ask for it, here's an anticipation to my spoilers.
Got 20k in 1796 AD, not a great date, but my priority was happiness and score. I choosed the Great Lighthouse over the Great Library in order to be able to venture oversea and take over some useful foreign land. Eventually, i built the GLib too with a leader. For when Navigation was known, my expansion phase was already over and i could enjoy the full set of luxuries. Of course, Germany was the first to go.
Barbs were a PITA, but they also provided a nice amount of promotions.
The biggest disavantage of this map was, IMO, a certain food scarcity and the complete absence of rivers.

 

[Più Freddo]

The biggest disavantage of this map was, IMO, a certain food scarcity and the complete absence of rivers.

Yeah, I had a Great Leader ready to rush Hoover Dam when I realized it just wasn't there. I used the Leader to rush a rather ineffective University in a fourth-tier city.

What inhibited me most was the research rate, which was just too slow compared to the production capactity of Persepolis. With Iron Works and all. Maybe I had put too little focus on Research in the early game. I used a Leader to rush Sixtine Chapel, which was nice, and another one later for some 2-cpt-Wonder.

End date 1675 AD. Domination since 1340 AD.

 

[Più Freddo]

Hmm, I knew that it would be kind of a challenge to achieve 20K on this map, but was it really that bad?!

I find that the Capital was quite nice, but the area around it and so the core cities was/were rather weak. Especially commercially. I couldn't find a way to practice ring placement. This is not a complaint! I liked the map.

Still, 166 spt at the end with Iron Works, Hospital, Factory, Coal Plant, Iron, Coal and Aluminum cannot really be called a challenge. Under Despotism I had 15 spt and under Republic 24 spt, which are perhaps more significant figures.

The Iron Works was a nice touch at a time in the game where it started to get rather boring, as so often when playing for Culture. To be able to go from 24 spt to 104 spt through the combination of Iron Works, Railroads and a Hospital in nine turns just doesn't happen every day.

 

[Lanzelot]

Yes, I wanted to make it not "too easy", so the player had to make good plans and decisions in the early phase, and then throw in a couple of nice "gimmicks" in the later stages for more opportunities to draw up plans.

 

[Più Freddo]

year|building|rank|culture|turns
3950 BC|Palace|14|624|10
3100 BC|Temple|7|1174|19
1225 BC|The Great Library|1|2754|45
1200 BC|Library|4|1371|22
710 BC|The Oracle|3|1656|27
550 BC|Colosseum|11|780|13
270 BC|The Great Wall|12|696|11
130 BC|Cathedral|10|990|16
50 AD|The Hanging Gardens|6|1212|20
90 AD|Sistine Chapel|2|1782|29
150 AD|University|8|1152|19
450 AD|J.S.Bach's Cathedral|5|1278|21
470 AD|Sun Tzu's Art of War|16|414|7
640 AD|Copernicus' Obervatory|14|624|10
810 AD|Shakespeare's Theater|9|1040|17
980 AD|Newton's University|13|678|11
1090 AD|Iron Works|20|204|3
1130 AD|Heroic Epic|17|392|6
1190 AD|Smith's Trading Company|19|276|4
1260 AD|Universal Suffrage|18|336|5
1280 AD|Military Academy|23|80|1
1300 AD|Intelligence Agency|24|76|1
1340 AD|Theory of Evolution|20|204|3
1380 AD|Wall Street|22|120|2
1440 AD|Battlefield Medicine|26|48|1
1465 AD|The Pentagon|27|43|1
1610 AD|United Nations|25|56|1
1615 AD|Research Lab|28|26|0
1635 AD|Apollo Program|29|18|0
1665 AD|The Manhattan Program|30|6|0

 

[Più Freddo]

I entered the Middle Ages in 230 BC, still under Despotism, towards
the end of the Golden Age. The Monarchy that was established in 170 BC
would last until the end of days in 1675 AD.

A massive army of Immortals was about to attack Germany. A Great
Leader emerged in 30 AD on the German island. It would take two turns
to transport him into the Capital, so it finished its Hanging Gardens
in 50 AD, built a regular Immortals in 70 AD and then Sistine Chapel
in 90 AD.

The next Leader emerged in 440 AD and was used for Sun Tzu's Art of
War in the interturn to 470 AD. This time I squeezed in a Marketplace
(460 AD) after J.S.Bach's Cathedral (450 AD). Again, the timing was
very fortunate just at the end of a major build. Only the next Leader
I used towards an Army opening up the possibility to build a handful
of Small Wonders starting with Heroic Epic. Perhaps it was a mistake
to build Sun Tzu's Art of War with only 2 cpt.

The rest isn't very interesting, just trying to build things in spcpt
order as best as possible. What I forgot was that the Industrial Ages
primarily offers Small Wonders, most of which I had completely
forgotten the existence of.

 

[Più Freddo]

I played around with Excel and got it to generate some statistics, which I used to update the table two posts up. The last column, "turns" shows how many of all the turns was on average provided by the building in question. That is not quite the same as how many turns faster the game got thanks to the building, but perhaps an estimate, which should get better towards the end of the game.

E.g. is the number of average-turns-worth of culture provided by Sistine Chapel, which I rushed with a Great Leader, 29. If I remove it from the build order, the game is delayed by 12 turns (11 if I also remove the then useless Immortals the turn before). Building it by hand would have required 24 turns, moving the end date a couple of turns shy of the result when not building it at all. This of course only shows that there are plenty of buildings with a similar cpspt value around 100. In reality, I would have changed the build order so that the University was built before Sistine Chapel, giving an end date of 1720 AD, 9 turns later that what actually happened.

I think nine turns are a significant amount and reason enough to go hunting for leaders in the early Middle Ages if you have a chance.

At the end of the game, the last useful building was The Pentagon. I could have stopped research after The Corporation, turned entertainment spending to max and earned a few more points.

 

[tR1cKy]

I enter the MA in peace with everyone, and with the full set of first-tier tech. Next turn, Germany is RoP'ed, raped and annihilated None of the oversea AS had contact with them, so my dastardly acts toward poor Bismark went unnoticed.

With the benefits of the Great Lighthouse, i could start immediately my campaign on the far landmass. At that point, Babylon was fairly well developed, Russia and Ottomans had a decent infrastructure while Greece was totally hopeless. However, by taking over Greece and Ottomans i could seize control of all the 8 luxuries with no need to rely on trade deals that could be broken at any moment with some stupid surprise attack from the AS, so i decided to go that way.

The first batch of troops reaches the Greek coast in 10 BC and by 260 AD Greece is reduced OCC on its southern island settlement. By 390 AD Ottomans are reduced to boat people. They lived that way, never settling anywhere, until they were misteriously destroyed several centuries later. With that, the expansion phase was over, taking aside the Greek island city that was taken over in the early industrials, immediately after the tech trading phase.

During the campaigns i fished three leaders, used for Great Library, Sistine Chapel and the Forbidden Palace in Istanbul, but many more were to come. At some point, Russia tried to sneak-attack and i made good use of the leader-fishing game. Another one came with the demise of Greece. Then, in the late industrials, Russia went for it again and a little while later Babylon joined in. Since i didn't need to trade, i stayed at war until the very end of the game. Periodically, some units came, i shelled them to redline then finished them off with almost no casualties. Once in a while, a leader came and i used it for some improvement in Pasargadae. That was it, until the 20k mark was reached in 1796 AD.

I'm kind of disappointed with the score, barely above the 10k mark.

Here's my 20k progression in Pasargadae:

2230bc: temple
1275bc: Colossus
1150bc: library
_350bc: Great Lighthouse
_190bc: colosseum
__70bc: cathedral
_230ad: Great Library
_260ad: Sistine Chapel
_340ad: university
_530ad: Hanging Gardens
_750ad: Copernicus
1070ad: Bach's
1080ad: Newton's
1150ad: Heroic Epic
1290ad: Shakespeare's
1320ad: Universal Suffrage
1370ad: Wall Street
1470ad: United Nations
1475ad: SETI Program
1505ad: Internet / research lab
1570ad: Cure for Cancer
1620ad: Manhattan Project
1630ad: Longevity
1635ad: Apollo Program
1680ad: Intelligence Agency
1685ad: Battlefield Medicine
1710ad: Military Academy
1735ad: The Pentagon
1770ad: Strategic Missile Defense

 

[Più Freddo]

What happened to The Oracle?

 

[tR1cKy]

What happened to The Oracle?

It was built by the Greeks in the BC's. After i completed the Lighthouse, they cascaded to the Oracle and completed it 2 turns after.