GOTM 16 Final Spoiler

[bio_hazard]

Contender- Domination Victory in 1904AD. Final Score around 20000 (hmmm- somehow haven't gotten the confirmation email to check on this)

First of all- this was my first official win in 4OTM! wuhoo!

Second- I still clearly have a lot to learn about this game. I kept way too many cities. I kept way too many cities, and had a couple of military campaigns stall because of strikes. I also did some really stupid things, like after autorazing Frances last city in the upper right corner of the continent (all ice with copper and fur I believe), I sent a settler up there to claim the land. My income went from 0 to -15 instantly! Argh.

Basically my whole game was capturing 2-3 cities, having to sue for peace, waiting 10-20 turns, then repeating. Kind of a slog, which is a lesson for me to get things moving earlier so i don't have to capture so many cities!

The AI's were actually very cooperative in this game, at least for my purposes. In the first spoiler, France had founded Hinduism and both Greece and the Mongols had converted. I started my expansion into France, and was worried that both civs would declare on me. The Mongols did, but only by the time I was taking a break from France and was about to take out their iron anyway. Alex switched religions, and when that religion came to me I converted to get him less pissed off at me. We were actually pleased/friendly the whole game, and he never attacked. It was funny to be at +11 and pleased with him, while he was +7 and friendly with the mongols.

The Mongols were pretty easy to deal with, and I left them with only a couple of polar research stations until close to the end of the game. Meanwhile, the greeks and incans had been fighting on and off, which kept them both from running away (my research was shut off after about Machinery/CS to try to pay for everything- Alex actually gave me some techs and money every time I asked for them!) The incans were pretty tough, and by my second campaign against them they had muskets, war elephants, crossbows. I basically had to spam them with tons of Elephants, Cats, and Maces until I could finally get enough of their cities (turns out I didn't need the ones on the island- thankfully!).

All in all a fun game! Doubt I'll have time to do the next one, although right now I'm completely snowed in. If it lasts until after April 1, maybe I'll have a shot at getting to it!

 

[AlanH]

Contender- Domination Victory in 1904AD. Final Score around 20000 (hmmm- somehow haven't gotten the confirmation email to check on this)

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Final score 20211.

 

[da_Vinci]

Last war was with Alex, declared in 800AD. By 1050 I had captured 4 cities, capitol included. Domination land was not far away, so I built a few settlers, finished Hanging Gardens in 1180AD, lightbulbed 3 techs with idle GS's in the last turn and won by Domination in 1200AD, for some 77k final score. That is the closest to milking a game I have ever done. I usually go for the fastest finishes I can manage.

@ C63: Welcome to the league of dairy farmers!

My cows came up dry, and I was lucky to get away with my hide in this one.

I didn't play the close neighbors very well, got off to a slow start. Khan founded a city at the iron to the west, so I took that off his hands at turn 95 (500 BC).

That's when Alex declared on me and came streaming in with 'anxes and axes. He took the iron city, ( ) and it was all I could do to whip up enough jags to hold him off elsewhere.

Finally recovered enough to go after Khan in 520 AD (turn 136). Finally got some metal for my first axeman in 900 AD !

So with that late a start on my aggression, end with a Dom victory in 1972, 4473 base, 11904 final. My relative position in the Deity game will probably be higher!

All in all, an embarrassing result

dV

 

[bio_hazard]

So with that late a start on my aggression, end with a Dom victory in 1972, 4473 base, 11904 final. My relative position in the Deity game will probably be higher!

dV

Darn, there goes my shield award...

Nice save after a rough start.

 

[da_Vinci]

Darn, there goes my shield award...

Don't be too disappointed ... unlike the other shields, I am not sure the dom shield is anything to brag about (hmm ... this might be my second one )

I call it the "lamest winning general" award. Just a hair above that green ambulance!

Nice save after a rough start.

Thanks for the support. Good thing it was Prince level ... would not have pulled it out otherwise!

And congrats to you bio_hazzard for that first official win!

dV

 

[DynamicSpirit]

(Late write-up coz of moving house and so not having access to the computer I wrote the write-up on)


'That would’ve been sooooooo impressive if it’d been 1696AD not 1896AD'

The Top Secret Strategy (Enter password to open the spoiler...)

Spoiler :

So how did you get in here without the password?

Anyway, I was going to go for a cultural victory, but I wanted not to use the usual approach as described in Godotnut’s guide, but to see how it would work if I absolutely prioritized great artists, to the extent of rigorously avoiding generating any other great people. In particular that ruled out building the pyramids, along with any non-artist-generating wonders, at least until sufficiently late in the game that they wouldn’t actually generate any great people. I suspected imposing this condition would destroy any chances of my getting the fastest cultural – though in the event, I made several mistakes that meant my science went too slowly so I couldn’t turn the culture slider up until relatively late in the game – which probably weighed as much as the overall strategy. I also intended to stop teching at democracy (hoping to get democracy as my liberalism-free-tech).

Anyway, as per my first spoiler, 500AD saw me in the middle of a disastrous war with Alex in which I’d just lost quite a bit of my army thanks to my innovative tactic of leaving my swordsmen to explore undefended against Alex’s axes. Let the story continue...

Post 500AD

Spoiler :

I then rebuilt a new army and went on to capture both Sparta and Athens with ease, so in 840AD, the turn I made peace with Alex, my empire looked like this.



Note the rather unfortunate limit to my Western exploration. I’d stopped about 1 tile short of seeing the western edge of the Pangaea, which meant for some time I didn’t realize I’d taken basically all of Alex’s decent land. I imagined a continent stretching westwards containing other vast and fertile Greek cities, and for some time kept uselessly building up a defensive force in Athens to guard against the imaginary threat!

Anyway I continued building science with cottages. There followed a couple more land-grab wars with Genghis (to get his gold: I was having happiness issues) and Louis (because his cultural borders took my marbles. Sorry, I mean my marble), which left me with 8 nice cities. Huayna was the only civ with any decent science and I finally managed to coax him into being friendly with me so he’d trade all his exclusive techs.

Alex’s Final Gift

Spoiler :

Second big error: I never noticed that Sparta had Stonehenge – until suddenly this unwanted great prophet was staring out at me from the city. So much for only generating artists! I used the great Saint Useless to lightbulb divine right, thinking that would let me build Versailles – except of course I’d forgotten Versailles gives merchant points not artist points, so I didn’t want to build it anyway. Afterwards I made damn well sure I kept my GP farms ahead of Sparta so Sparta gave me no more so-called great people!

No Democracy

Spoiler :

I was first to liberalism in 1520AD, having researched representation (relatively late. I think what did me in was partly the lack of trading opportunities and partly I kept not building enough workers which meant too few cottages). And I got a shock: Democracy wasn’t listed as an option for the free tech! None of the listed techs were ones that I wanted. What did I do wrong??? Of course there was no option to investigate prior to picking the free tech, so I opted for military tradition because it was the most expensive tech listed and it might later give me the option for cavalry for defence if needed. Turns out I hadn’t noticed printing press was a requirement for democracy. That required machinery, which required metal casting, which I didn’t have. (Why would I want metal casting for a cultural victory?) Even more galling, if I’d bothered looking at the tech tree 2 turns earlier, I could’ve easily traded both metal casting and machinery from Huayna, which would’ve meant I could’ve researched printing press and got democracy 6-7 turns later.

I finally got democracy in 1600AD, which meant, after swapping civics and buying up a few buildings, I could at last turn up the cultural slider in 1645AD. Meanwhile I went to war with Alex again, partly to try and weaken him while I still had relatively advanced units, and partly because I was suffering health problems and he had crabs (Now try reading that sentence out of context…). I captured Knossos by the crabs and ended the war in 1675AD.



(Wrong year for screenshot but it shows why I wanted Knossos)

Too Much of a Good Thing…

Spoiler :

After that it would’ve been an uninterrupted cruise to victory. Would’ve been. But there was a problem, you see. I was generating too much culture everywhere. Look….



My borders were kinda growing. Land area at 64%, 65%, 66%. Huayna gave me a -3 for ‘our close borders spark tension’ and stopped being friendly – so, no more tech trades. I went to my minister for cultural affairs and asked her to do something, but she just reminded me that if I wanted a cultural victory I kinda needed some culture to do it with. Unhelpful sod! When in 1830AD my landarea reached 67.5%, just 0.5% short of the domination limit, I knew I had to take action. With great sadness in my heart and the knowledge of future unhealthiness, I tried to gift Knossos back to Alex.

You know what? After all the fight he put up to defend it in the war, he now didn’t want it! So I handed it to Genghis instead (being the only leader who would take it.)

Phew! Back to culture!

A Most Warlike Cultural Victory

Spoiler :

But giving up Knossos wasn’t enough. In 1876AD, with just 10 turns to go until my victory, my landarea was back up to about 67.7%! I was forced to gift Texcoco, one of my great artist farms on the East coast, to Louis. Unfortunately that took away a lot of land and a sizeable bit of my score. Suddenly I was right down to 59% land. My generals were furious. The only way I could placate them was by declaring war on Genghis to take back Knossos. Unfortunately there was a tile under Greek control blocking the way to Knossos, so I declared war on Greece too. Since I had a stack of troops sitting idly in the East and Louis had a couple of other cities surrounded by my culture, I declared on him as well. Well, why not! What a sweet final couple of turns:

1182AD: All is peaceful, as it should be with an impending cultural victory.
1184AD: Declare war on Greece
1886AD: Declare war on Mongolia
1888AD: Capture Tiwanaku (from Alex). Declare war on Napoleon. Capture Avignon.
1890AD: Capture Knossos (from Genghis). Besancon (France) suddenly culture flips to me.
1892AD: Tenochtitlan and Karakorum achieve legendary culture
1894AD: Capture Tours. Sparta achieves legendary culture. How’s that for coordinating the timing between the three culture cities!
1896AD: I win

D’ya think I could do with lessons in diplomacy?

 

[Htadus]

D’ya think I could do with lessons in diplomacy?

Where is the love man? It is interesting that you could win by domination on your way to a cultural victory. I guess that should be expected of with all that culture. I see you made it tough for your self by doing a variation. But you had fun the neigbors.

I think I should try a culture game soon. And no variations.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Where is the love man? It is interesting that you could win by domination on your way to a cultural victory. I guess that should be expected of with all that culture. I see you made it tough for your self by doing a variation. But you had fun the neigbors.

I think I should try a culture game soon. And no variations.

Tee hee!

I think the coming close to domination happened partly because the map was so small, though the fact that I allowed myself to keep more than the usual 9 cities helped. When going for cultural wins, I tend to be quite nervous of getting militarily weak and then getting walked over by another civ once I'm in the 100% culture phase; because of that I tend to try to get more cities early on so I'm more powerful. But even so, on a larger map, a typical cultural victory wouldn't come close to domination limit, even allowing for a couple of extra cities.

 

[mart777]

D’ya think I could do with lessons in diplomacy?

A "Glance" option in the foreign adviser? this is from a mod? would it work with HOF mods for GOTM?
Thanx

 

[Thrallia]

it is part of the HOF mod, its the Exotic Foreign Advisor, you just need to enable it in the options HOF2 tab.

 

[mart777]

thank you,