GOTM 15 - final spoiler

Erkon · Feb 17, 2007

GOTM15 History of Erkon Capac

Continuation from First Spoiler, in which I captured two Egyptian city. *warning - long spoiler*

Preparations for war

Spoiler :

Second Egyptian Wars

Spoiler :

Third war with Hatshepsut

Spoiler :

Provoking Hatshepsut

Spoiler :

1358 AD Three turns to Steel, Roosevelt and Cyrus has it. Hope, hope, hope I can trade it for some other tech!

1364 AD Hatshepsut has Riflemen. Darn. And shes running Nationhood. I wonder if Im really going to make it when I attack her the fourth time. And why should I? Well, I wont win the game, so I just want to see if I can make a difference.

1370 AD Gandhi has steel. Darn.

1376 AD Learned Steel. Trade it to Peter for Printing Press, Optics, Calendar, World Map and 320 gold.

I just remembered the opening video when some sort of king is crowned in front of a lot of people. Thats sooo remote right now. I will pass Peter in score very soon, and my goal is to bring down Hatshepsut. Then what? Well, I want the Incan people to understand that the flashes in the skies are not the gods who are angry but its our neighbors leaving this damned planet.

Time to plan for another war against Hatshepsut then. Ill shut down research and upgrade my units, then Ill attack. Sell Steal for 270 gold to Tokugawa.

1388 AD The b***h requests my Steel. I wont give in to her demands, but I will trade it for astronomy. This may be madness, but my only way to win the game is through diplomacy. I wont win without UN, so I may as well trade her cannons and hope she cant handle them! Now Ive got some cash (1400 gold) and I will upgrade my units. Then Ill attack her!

1394 AD Tokugawa does not know Astronomy, and if I managed to get up to +5 in relation, I could trade with him. However, I have a 1 on trading with his worst enemies, and only +5 on peace/fair trade. Even if I get rid of the 2 from wrong religion, it wont help. So, Ill change to confucianism in order to see more of the Egyptian Lands Oh my god. Ohmygodogmygodohmygod. She has 29 units in her two north-west cities and 18 in her capital. Well, I may just as well go down with a bang. But I cant declare on her, since the other AI like her. So, I will offend her and hope she declares (-13 in relation).

1406 AD Again Gandhi wants me to join the war against Peter. Of course I refuse.

1430 AD She still wont declare, even though I have 19 towards her. Ill give it two more turns, then Ill DoW myself. And Ive passed Peter in score!

Fourth Egyptians Wars

Spoiler :

Race for the UN

Spoiler :

Final years

Spoiler :

Base score: 2328
Final score: 4656
Spaceship Loss to America
Challenger class

Achivements:
Captured Egyptian Capital
5 Turns from building the UN
Started the Apollo Project
Didnt loose any cities.

Mistakes:
Should not have built the sixth city.
Should not have attacked Hatshepsut the fourth time.
Should have explored earlier.
Should have skipped Literature.
Should not have adopted a religion.

Research Analysis
I have written a script that extracts the year each tech is discovered from the log and calculates the accumulated beakers. This gives a rough indication of the research pace and I have mapped my progress against Gnejs. He manages to trade more than me in the beginning, while my extra cities provide a quicker pace at the end. The line is red during my wars with Hatshepsut.

Notes:
Capturing a capital does not affect a civilization on Deity level as it does on lower levels.
I think the map was favourable with the exception of the problem with tech trade early on. I look forward to the next Deity (and Immortal) GOTM. As usual i would like to thank the GOTM team for their effort. As usual I would appreciate any comments on how to improve my play.

Lagashvili · Feb 17, 2007

Spaceship loss to America in 1756. Attempting to win by culture.

Second attempt in GOTM for a cultural victory. Far better than GOTM4 where I got a rather rude wake-up call from Alex in 1025 BC. Nine cities (got a tenth from Hatty by cultural conversion), three religions. Switched to full (or 90%) cultural at 1136 AD. Culture in my cities at the end in the range 53K to 63 K (counting also an unused GA).

No problem to survive. Popularity with Hatty peaked at +22 and DP with Hatty, Roosevelt and Cyrus (when they were not in war). Peter eliminated and Toku also in serious problem.

I think a cultural victory should have been possible. My first priority was survival and I didn't focus on cultural victory until around 0 AD.

jesusin · Feb 19, 2007

toller pretzl said:
Coastal blockade doesn't exist in civ4. Any unit can attack amphibiously, but without the amphibious promotion they get a 50 percent attack-penalty.

Oh, really? I didnt know that. I think I have even waited for amphibious units to attack single-tile island cities in another game.

Thank you very much.

Erkon said:
1730 AD Mass Media done. No-one else but Gandhi has it. I burn the Great Engineer and have 7 turn left.
1734 AD Gandhi completes the UN, 5 turns before me. Dammit.
... As usual I would appreciate any comments on how to improve my play.

Your game was much more successful than mine, but I will try anyway.

What about using the GE the turn you discover MM and then revolting to US? The following turn you rushbuy the rest of the UN and the following turn both you and Gandhi finish the UN at the same time, so you get it.

Erkon · Feb 19, 2007

jesusin said:
What about using the GE the turn you discover MM and then revolting to US? The following turn you rushbuy the rest of the UN and the following turn both you and Gandhi finish the UN at the same time, so you get it.

Thanks for the advice, the thought never occured to me. I'm not sure if it takes just one turn to revolt at this stage of the game, but even if it does, I wouldn't have much funds to buy 7 turns of UN production (optimising the research to reach MM as quick as possible leads to less than 100 gold on the turn I learned MM). And more important, I didn't know Democracy :lol:

DocSOG · Feb 20, 2007

Well, finally finished the game off.

First GOTM ever, never played above prince before, so went for Adventurer start. Unfortunately read too much pre game info and went for a Quecha rush. Should have stuck to my normal game plan. Got hammered silly by Barbarians early on too. Took a week off playing after I got to ~600AD as it wasn't fun to play anymore. Came back today, read the 1st spoilers and saw I wasn't alone and not doing much worse than quite a few others.

Eventually ended up with 8 cities, but was hemmed in by Hasheput's culture and very forward placed cities. To top it off, every other Civ bar Peter dumped a city on my continent. Ghandi beat me by a couple of turns to the smaller peninsular to the west of the start in the 1000AD ish mark

Ended up making friends as best I could as I was going nowhere fast (Def Pact with Cyrus & Roosevelt). Got quite a few techs gifted to me. Around 800AD I decided that 1000points was the goal for this game. Ended up with 1059 thanks to a late tech gift of Education from Roosevelt

Roosevelt took a Diplomatic win in 1724, but him, Ghandi and Hasheput were all neck and neck in a space race too

Think I'll play it again. With the knowledge of hindsight and sticking to my normal gameplan, I may go better this time and lose by a slightly smaller margin.

Nick

man-erg · Feb 20, 2007

Spaceship loss to Egypt, 1776. Adventurer start, 1074 points.

After 500AD, my aim was to somehow get my civ developing faster as I was way behind the others. I tried to maintain a balancing act of being on good terms with everyone else. I was even on good terms with Tokagawa, and had a defensive pact with him in the 16th century.

At this point, I was finally beginning to get some rapid growth. Somewhat spoiled by Tokugawa declaring war on Egypt around 1550. I refused to join in as I thought Egypt would easily smash me. However, the Americans took advantage and declared on me on the turn after Tokugawa cancelled our pact.

The Americans had a city south of me, on the ice towards the silver. I managed to hold them off for a while (Longbowmen v Riflemen and Cavalry), but eventually Cuzco fell. Offered another city and they made peace. Not too bad but it had totally wiped out the progress I'd made.

Just a matter of trying to rebuld and survive with as many points as possible.

Not sure what I learned, as Deity is too far ahead of what I really play at.

Vynd · Feb 21, 2007

jesusin said:
Thank you for the info, Vynd. Good to know. I will lose legendary cities more often now that I know that culture remains in them.

[A description of how I turned off research so as to generate enough gpt to bribe Roosevelt to make peace.]

Hey! I could have tried that in my game too! Specially since money is not a problem in a Deity (cultural) game. I knew I was going to learn new things in the spoilers.

You're welcome.

Games at high difficulty levels are definitely a good way to learn new tricks, even if they're mostly tricks you hope never to need to use.

The devoting-your-entire-economy-to-buying-a-peace-treaty strategy really does come in handy sometimes, sad to say. I've used it before, in the sort of situation you describe: trying for a culture win, militarily weak, and under attack. Sacrificing ten turns of commerce/research/culture output is a small price to pay if it saves some major cities and gets you out of an unwinable war. The hard part is figuring out how not to get stomped again 20 turns down the line.

My losing-your-almost-legendary-culture-city-then-recapturing-it strategy is still in its experimental stages. Do let us know if you get good results from it.

Giaur · Feb 22, 2007

Retired about 1500AD. I lost tech race. But this game was great. Someone should change starting conditions of every deity game just to be similar to those at Adventurer class of this game.

Lawrence · Feb 22, 2007

Erkon said:
Thanks for the advice, the thought never occured to me. I'm not sure if it takes just one turn to revolt at this stage of the game, but even if it does, I wouldn't have much funds to buy 7 turns of UN production (optimising the research to reach MM as quick as possible leads to less than 100 gold on the turn I learned MM). And more important, I didn't know Democracy

I have another way to build the UN, that is to build a Palace in the city with the most forests around, and time it so that the Palace finishes the same time as Mass Media. Then revolt to Organized Religion, burn the engineer and chop all those trees in that city, might be faster in many cases. The drawback is your research will take a severe hit, but at that time it might not be a problem.

VitalSol · Feb 22, 2007

Erkon said:
GOTM15 History of Erkon Capac

1262 AD Chemistry. And you know what? Peter has finally got his act together and declared on Gandhi! Perfect!! I trade Chemistry to Peter for Drama, Compass, Paper, World Map and 340 gold. Steel next. If I can trade that one away, I will get a lot in return.

1280 AD What fun, Gandhi asks me to join the war against Peter. Is he that desperate?

1316 AD Gandhi completes Kremlin.

1406 AD Again Gandhi wants me to join the war against Peter. Of course I refuse.

1523 AD Peter request me to start war with Gandhi. I oblige. We swap maps.

Total units lost in third Egyptian Wars:
Grenadier 6
Pikeman 1
Knight 1
Longbowman 1
Cannon 9

Sum = 18

1652 AD Cyrus completes Manhattan. Woe to the world!

1776 AD War between Gandhi and Peter. Tokugawa has defensive pact with Peter, and joins the fray. My first destroyer is completed.

1778 AD Rocketry done.

Notes:
Capturing a capital does not affect a civilization on Deity level as it does on lower levels.
I think the map was favourable with the exception of the problem with tech trade early on. I look forward to the next Deity (and Immortal) GOTM. As usual i would like to thank the GOTM team for their effort. As usual I would appreciate any comments on how to improve my play.

Erkon, was it possible after the 4th war with Hatty was over, actually sail to Ghandhi's lands and join the war on Peter's side?
The idea is to keep pressure on Ghandhi until he builds UN, then capture the UN city and use it for Diplo attempt.
Of course, Ghandhi might not build the UN while at war.
Alternatively capture as many city as possible to gain 1st or 2nd place in pop, again for the diplo attempt.
This is just a wild thought of mine.

And thank you so much for the detailed description of your game.

jesusin · Feb 23, 2007

Lawrence said:
I have another way to build the UN, that is to build a Palace in the city with the most forests around, and time it so that the Palace finishes the same time as Mass Media. Then revolt to Organized Religion, burn the engineer and chop all those trees in that city, might be faster in many cases. The drawback is your research will take a severe hit, but at that time it might not be a problem.

Why move the Palace? I suppose you are assuming Bureaucracy.

Erkon · Feb 23, 2007

VitalSol said:
Erkon, was it possible after the 4th war with Hatty was over, actually sail to Ghandhi's lands and join the war on Peter's side?
The idea is to keep pressure on Ghandhi until he builds UN, then capture the UN city and use it for Diplo attempt.
Of course, Ghandhi might not build the UN while at war.
Alternatively capture as many city as possible to gain 1st or 2nd place in pop, again for the diplo attempt.

I was perhaps not very clear in my spolier: Gandhi was far ahead of me in tech and he had much/B] more power than me . I've attached printouts that illustrates the situation. As you can see, Gandhi was winning over Peter. I will let the graphs speak for themselves.

Lawrence · Feb 23, 2007

jesusin said:
Why move the Palace? I suppose you are assuming Bureaucracy.

Well, yes. I forgot to mention that because I always use Bureaucracy till the end when climbing the tech ladder :blush:

. It is faster to build the UN under Bureaucracy, the Engineer you burn also gives more shields in capital under Bureaucracy. And it also fits perfectly with Newton's University.

VitalSol · Feb 23, 2007

Erkon said:
I was perhaps not very clear in my spolier: Gandhi was far ahead of me in tech and he had much/B] more power than me . I've attached printouts that illustrates the situation. As you can see, Gandhi was winning over Peter. I will let the graphs speak for themselves.

Oh well, it looks like Gandhi totally crushed Peter in your game
In mine Peter managed to capture one city from Gandhi and to hold it for the rest of the game, so I was influenced by what I had seen in my game perhaps.
Tough luck then ...

Markus5 · Feb 23, 2007

I haven't seen anyone discussing their wins, yet. Maybe I missed it. I'm curious to see how the winning games were played.

It's almost time for GOTM 16. Feb's a short month. The preview should open tomorrow, right? :-)

Jove · Feb 26, 2007

At the end of the last spoiler we had a fairly big and solid empire and had just started our first war, capturing Alexandria smack in the center of the continent. In 530 we captured Byblos, an isolated straggler. We'd gained 5 workers and hadn't suffered many casualties, but Egypt's forces were improving too fast and so we made peace for some gold.

And here is where we started making the mistakes that cost Huayna the game. We finished the Heroic Epic and the next turn in 560 attacked a stray Japanese town on the western penninsula by the horses. Hattie still loved us (we were both Hindu), so we pulled her into it and she took Japan's other colony on the west edge of the continent. Having gained land and started an AI war, we made peace in 710.

That sounds good, but it was a mistake. Here's why: Japan was never going to be a major power on the continent. His towns were not just sitting ducks, but land that Hattie couldn't use. We should have spammed settlers after our peace with Hattie to claim as much of the remaining land as possible, and then made our next move. But it could have been worse...

Ghandi was a good pal. He gifted us Optics around this time. We learn Paper, get Music, trade for techs and a pile of gold. Maps give us a de facto circumnavigation of the world, even though we hadn't actually travelled past parts of Japan and India. All reasons to be optimistic.

Somewhere in here we made our gravest mistake. Instead of beelining Grenardiers (or any leg-up militarily) we went for Astronomy, thinking it'd be great to trade. Well, we also thought it would be great to take more of Hattie's cities. So we did both, attacking Egypt again in 725. Our tactics were good enough, we killed plenty of units on defense and managed to take 3 towns. Lotta resources in those towns, awesome! And Cyrus will trade Ivory, so we can get some Elephants to defeat Egypt's Knights. But- even having lost 3 cities Egypt would not accept peace unless we gave one back. I never expected such stiff peace terms. We were certainly done slogging through them by 1100 and, just one turn from losing it anyway, gave them Pi Rameses, the iron town, back.

Not exactly a situation from which to walk away and retire the game. Nope, I really thought it might be possible to win this one militarily, but we were already done. The war had murdered our tech pace toward Astronomy, and we got beat to that by all but one civ, who wouldn't give much for it. We didn't fall behind as far as possible- Hattie, Toku, and Peter all had problems and were willing to trade here and there. But in the short term there would be no trading, we didn't even have Feudalism yet, and Hattie's empire streched from the western tip of the continent all the way along the north shore to her unspoiled homeland. Too much border against too big a Deity AI civilization, and we never attacked her, or anyone else, ever again. We finally caught up (sort of, we had Physics anyway) and by the time Ghandi launched in 1768 we were just on the brink of attacking Hattie again.

So, the last 6 centuries amounted to an interesting witnessing of no action. We built a great little empire while we watched for a break that never came. In retrospect an early Great Scientist would have been super, we had 2 GA's this game off of great people but both of them together weren't worth as much as a pair of really early scientists would have been. Or if not that, a more insane push toward continental domination, like whipping cities practically to death or spending all cash on upgrades to take Thebes early. We kinda split things down the middle, and we all know if you chase two rabbits you'll lose them both ha ha.

Anyway, had things worked out the strategy would have been this: Secure our continent. Build a huge fleet of galleons or whatever was best plus scads of infantry and siege weapons. Bide our time, wait for an AI to build a few spaceship parts, then drop a monstrous force outside their capitol. We'd get eaten alive, but not until after taking the capitol and forcing them to start over on their space race. Rinse and repeat. Hopefully we'd be able to simply prevent everyone from launching until they'd been eroded enough to defeat altogether. Coulda been a lot of fun, but whatever. It was still a great game, I'm glad the staff drops a whopper like this on us now and then, thanks guys :goodjob:

Final score 4706, 2353 Firaxis points.

Mutineer · Feb 26, 2007

Space ship loss to Gandy.
Nothing generally to say. I do not believe there was any chance to win. Everyone was too far away, trade was late, only one civ on starting continent. All that prevent any good use of military.
Some might got lucky with Quecha rush, but hatty was too far away for it to be efficient, even if some one found her. I did not.

That is a problem, all game I did not see any way to win, what so ever.

Vynd · Feb 27, 2007

Jove said:
Anyway, had things worked out the strategy would have been this: Secure our continent. Build a huge fleet of galleons or whatever was best plus scads of infantry and siege weapons. Bide our time, wait for an AI to build a few spaceship parts, then drop a monstrous force outside their capitol. We'd get eaten alive, but not until after taking the capitol and forcing them to start over on their space race. Rinse and repeat. Hopefully we'd be able to simply prevent everyone from launching until they'd been eroded enough to defeat altogether.

Are you working under the assumption that capturing a Civ's capital destroys the spaceship that is under construction? I know this was possible in some earlier versions of Civ but I'm not at all certain it works that way now.

In any event, while your bid for victory may have sputtered out after awhile, it sounds like your empire reached greater heights than most of us did. Well done!

Jove · Feb 27, 2007

Thanks Vynd. Yeah, I thought all spaceship parts wound up in the capitol. Take that out and they have to start over. Or, it could be whichever city builds the Apollo program gets all the parts. I never got far enough to find out. Maybe someone else is certain of these details, I could be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time...

Vynd · Feb 27, 2007

Markus5 said:
I haven't seen anyone discussing their wins, yet. Maybe I missed it. I'm curious to see how the winning games were played.

It's almost time for GOTM 16. Feb's a short month. The preview should open tomorrow, right?

Thorrez posted about his Diplomatic Victory on the first page. I think that's it so far. I'd be surprised if that's the only victory... but not that surprised.

Most victories each month are either military-related (including backdoor Diplomatic) or space ships, as opposed to a pure Diplomatic victory or a Culture win. And its not surprising that this is the case, because military victories and space race victories are the surest bets most of the time. But in this game I think things were reversed.

Peoples' posts have proven that it was all but impossible to keep up in military or technological might. That means a military or space race victory would be extremely difficult at best. Whereas you can conceivably win via Culture or peaceful Diplomacy when you're backwards and weak. So I think those were the best bets for victory in GOTM15. However, most of us are more familiar with, and seem to prefer, the other paths to victory. So I doubt there will be many people who attempted peaceful Diplomacy or Culture wins. And even those who did had the odds stacked against them...

Congrats to Thorrez, by the way! :salute:

GOTM 15 - final spoiler

Deity

Attachments

Chieftain

Ant

Deity

Chieftain

Warlord

Prince

War Dancer

Warlord

Chieftain

Ant

Deity

Attachments

Warlord

Chieftain

Code Monkey

Not Lacking Altitude

Deity

Prince

Not Lacking Altitude

Prince

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