GOTM 16 First Spoiler

[Vynd]

Now to the game. My goal was fastest conquest. I finished in 2 hours and 11 minutes. Was anybody faster?

That's at least twice as fast as my game, in real time, and mine was the fastest GOTM I'd ever played by a wide margin.

In 750 BC 2nd mongolian city was razed and my units moved towards his last one. used worker to lure some archers out of the city and captured it in 575BC. mongols are dead.

Nice move with the Worker. I used a spare Worker as bait to get a highly promoted unit out of some forest in my game but never even considered using them to empty units out of cities. Kind of mean to exploit the AI this way, but when you're going to win the war no matter what why not make things go a little faster?

Cuzco looks evil. On a hill with 60% cultural defenses and a CD3 archer. Sounds like we should bring more man. But our trops are too nervous and they attack. And they all get killed.

I knew I should wait, but I just couldn't resist. So i signed peace.

Haven't we all done this a few times? After marching your army for turns and turns it sure can be hard to admit they need to stop and turn around.

Finally I think that after this I won't be the fastest. I think that a BC conquest is doable and we will see some. I might try another one if time permits.

I'm inclined to agree, but this is nevertheless a very impressive win!

 

[Capt Buttkick]

The plan was going to be – probably no religions and probably no wonders – make a construction base of 4 cities, build a wad of Jaguars (kung-fu men with painted cricket bats!) and smack them in turn until there are no more. Research was going to be purely what we needed, and nothing more. No frills! Cave man!

I think 4 cities were too much in this game. Seems like the fastest approach would be get to IW asap, use Teno and probably another city (built/chopped while waiting for IW) to crank out 5-6 jags and then go for France and Mongolia.
I think with that approach, you could even get to Greece before they had too many Phalanxes and HCs cities fell easily except for Cuzco which seems to be a culture monster in most games; but even Cuzco would fall to the sheer amount of Jags gathered by then imhso.

I don't think the question is whether there will be BC conquests. I'm looking forward to see if the top players make it around 1000 BC

 

[AgedOne]

I think 4 cities were too much in this game. Seems like the fastest approach would be get to IW asap, use Teno and probably another city (built/chopped while waiting for IW) to crank out 5-6 jags and then go for France and Mongolia

I quite agree with you. I'm very inexperienced at playing for conquest, and I think my original plan was too simplistic. Everything took far too long (more of that later!). The more I thought about it, the more I realised that I wasted time getting 4 cities up - when you consider if the plan works you'll have Karakorum and Paris before too long.

I never fail to be astonished at the way the top players get the maximum out of their games. I'll be watching for their finish times with great interest!

 

[BSmith1068]

I too forgot to turn the autolog on, and did this all in one shot. Didn't keep track of the time, but it was somewhere between 2 and 3 hours.

Founded first city on hill N of flood plain - plan was to have that city to have a lot of food to be able to build a settler quite quickly, and then found the second city 2E of initial start for a good production city (my other option for beginning city). Went with the hill N of flood plain becuase the corn would be much quicker to get on line (no need to build a work boat, just a worker that I would need for everything else as well). Turns out that was a good spot becuase it had 2 corn and the flood plain.

Founded the second city as planned. At this point I had met most everyone and was nearing IW.

Tech plan was to skip religion (although I sure did think about it) and go straigt for IW. Started with Agriculture>mining>BW>IW.

Once I had IW I started the jaguar production that would never stop the rest of the game...

The First War (sorta)
I had a warrior out helping the scout map out where everyone was - and decided to post him next to the copper in Alex's land - once he had a worker start to work it - I attacked - classic worker steal, except that I knew that I was not going to get him back to my land and just killed him. My warrior died that very turn from an archer counter attack, and that was the end of my first war. Alex never did get anything close to my lands (except a scout) and I was focused on closer targets at this point.

Conquest begins
First Up - France. Kept Paris and one more city to the NE by the wines(shouldn't have kept this one in retrospect). My Jaguars did not face much resistance from his warriors and archers.

Next up - Ghengis. Prety much the same deal - kept his capital

Next - Alex. This took a little longer, as the distances from my cities were beginning to mount. During the conquest of Greece I realized that I might have overextended myself. I had been running a deficit for quite some time, but when I finally got low on cash, I realized that even at zero research, I was still negative (!!). My units went on strike twice during the game - but I think I only lost one Jaguar because of it. Needless to say, I never was able to complete research Mathematics or beyond.

I decided to keep Athens since it had the Mids, and then switched to Police State for the incresed military output.

Next (and last) up - Incas. I was still deficit spending at zero research, so I needed to start capturing more cities to stay alive. By this point I had a long stream of Jaguars heading to the front but not a large mass all together. Cuzco was a b*tch to get due to the 60% culture and well promoted archers. I thought at one point that I was going to have to consolidate and attack all at once, but I decided to just keep throwing Jags at the city as they got there. Eventually I was able to raise the city, breaking the Inca's back. Losing that many Jags normally wouldn't be good practice, but I needed to get my overall army size down (deficit spending - remember?) and it was keeping the archer's health down (even if they were getting promotions).

Anyway - long story short - I only saw one or two phalanxes before the Incas fell in 475 AD (for the 500 AD win).

 

[DynamicSpirit]

No fair! 500AD and other people have done conquest and won, but I'm nowhere near winning a cultural victory yet

I started by moving the settler SW-W to the hill to investigate the flood-plain area, while the scout moved N-NW to take a look at the view to the north. The settler move revealed the 2nd corn and after lots of studying I decided on the forest 2W of the settler start position for the capital, but I held off another turn so the settler could check for any sea resources that might impact the decision. Luckily during that turn the scout, circling round, discovered the gems, in time for me to change plans and settle the capital to pick up both corns and the gems. A nice potential culture centre:



Build order: Worker, scout, warrior, archer, barracks, several archers, worker (for completion just before iron working, to get the gems faster), then started spamming jaguars.

Research: Agriculture (for the corn), archery (coz I’d just discovered how close Louis and Genghis were), then beeline for iron working (would’ve done pottery first but not needed with the gems in my capital), wheel, then beeline for alphabet.

I built the 2nd scout to map out the land quickly, but didn’t get very far. The starting scout got killed by an animal in the arctic wastelands, and the 2nd one quickly survived enough animal attacks to get a medic 1 promotion – at that point I brought him home to use as a war medic. By 500AD I still hadn’t explored significantly more land than in the screenshot above.

Early game conquest-style – coz – like Ainwood gave us any choice in that matter? As soon as I had 3 archers, I declared war on Genghis, to stop him mining his gems, but I didn’t actually assault Karakorum until I had 5 jaguars. Karakorum fell in 1360, a nice spot for my 2nd culture centre. At that point I judged my Mongol military objectives achieved, and declared war on Napoleon. Genghis had a second city which I ignored: I didn’t want to actually wipe anyone out because I judged my best guarantee of safety in the planned end-game 100%-culture-no-science period would be if the non-Aztec land was divided between as many small weak tundra-bound civs as possible, perhaps leaving one powerful but friendly civ that I could trade techs with. However, although I then left Genghis alone, I didn’t negotiate a peace treaty for quite a while – I was waiting till I had alphabet so I could extract some techs from him. He’s not getting away that easily…

I razed Paris in 1040BC (too food-poor to be much use to me) and Lyons in 875BC (in the wrong place for my planned cities) before judging my French objectives also achieved. Settled Teoticuahan 3NE of the capital to pick up the rice, ivory and marble, and Tlatelolco 2S of the ruins of Lyons to pick up the two clams to the SE – my first planned great-artist-farm. As soon as I’d hooked up the marble I started building the Parthenon in the capital (built 225BC).

From then on for quite a while I simply used cottages on those 4 cities to get as much science as I could. I couldn’t see any other good city sites within reasonable distance of the capital and didn’t want to found further away until I had either currency or code of laws. I also had a problem. I couldn’t do any more scouting: Huayna and Alex had totally blocked in the land west of ex-Mongolia and with the aggressive AI setting they were both annoyed so no open borders. Since they were both powerful I knew I’d have to declare war on one of them sooner or later but, with no knowledge of either of their lands I had no idea which of them I should weaken and which I should befriend.

At some point round about 400BC they went to war with each other. I decided that on grounds of diplo penalties I’d join on the side of whoever asked me first. Huayna was the one to take that initiative so in 200BC I found myself at war with Alex. I sent my jaguars and axes towards Sparta, SW of Karakorum, by the gems/pigs/rice/river. My stacks quickly established that with loads of river-grassland, Sparta would be an excellent 3rd cultural centre. However its Greek culture was massive (I didn’t realize why at the time: Turned out later it had Stonehenge), and I’m very close to construction and catapults, so I thought it made more sense to wait for those before attacking. This was the point where I made what looked at the time to be a sensible decision that turned out to be disastrous. Not wanting to attack Sparta yet, and with no knowledge of Greek lands, I sent my stacks of jaguars a-exploring. Would’ve worked well, except I only had one axe to protect them with, and within about two turns I’d misclicked that axe and sent him to the wrong tile – so he – umm – was no longer protecting the jaguars. Any guesses as to the result….? Yep, one after another my CRIII jaguars, carefully trained on the battlefields of Mongol and France, were slaughtered by vicious Greek axes. And my medic I scout too. Oooh, that hurt! Alex scarcely lost a single unit during the massacre. This is so wrong! It’s supposed to be the other way round… The AI is supposed to be the one that thanks to silly military tactics loses its army to an inferior force.

So - at the end of this stage of the war, I’d lost a substantial portion of my army in exchange for … the knowledge of where Athens was. Oh no, I did get something else: Sparta has just become the Jewish Holy City – and got a shrine to boot. That would be a juicy prize if I actually had anything left capable of capturing it.

At that point I temporarily abandoned thoughts of cottaging and science and basically started building military units as fast as possible everywhere. And that’s where I was at in 500AD.

No screenshot coz I forgot to save the game at that point – the nearest I have is 300 years later, which I guess would be pushing the spoiler conditions an itsy bit too far….

 

[=FC=Gorgon]

Seems like those of us who do not play conquest victory a lot suffered the same basic fate. We had too many cities and our economy suffered for it. Thus also seems to have dragged things out.

From what I've been reading, it looks like an early conquest victory is very possible. My bet is that most players will achieve a victory but the 'conquest-heads' will achieve an amazingly fast victory which hopefully we all can learn from.

G

 

[TeHGhost]

TeHGhost welcome to the forum.

Now to the game. My goal was fastest conquest. I finished in 2 hours and 11 minutes. Was anybody faster?

2 hours 16 mins... Almost got you!

Thanks for the welcome

 

[tycoonist]

you guys got some quick times...

my main mistake was not declaring for so long. built 4 cities then declared on Napoleon and took Lyons (Jewish HC) and paris. made peace when i was simultaneously declared on by Genghis and HC. took genghis out. peace with HC. by now i had a huge tech lead, i cruised to the end taking out napoleon, genghis ,alex.

 

[AgedOne]

Bah! You youngsters and your fast times!
I remember when a game of Civilization used to take a whole year. That was back in the 1930s. We called it Civilization, then - never this new-fangled 'Civ'.

My own attempt took over 10 hours (and that wasn't nearly long enough).

More about that in spoilers 2, 3 and 4

 

[iluxan]

This is my first GotM. Been lurking here for at least a year, downloaded some look-alike saves from the pre-game discussion threads, but never got enough time to actually play a GotM, until now. Anyway, on to the game.

Founded 2nd city west on the coast in 2080BC. Discovered Iron Working and built my first Jaguar in 1600BC and declared on Ghengis Khan in 925BC. Razed his outlying city of Turfan (to the NW, near my capital), but then the war went nowhere fast. I had no catapults (far from it), and so could never build up enough critical mass to take his capital. In 450BC finally galloped all the way around his territory and up to Beshbalik (far to the NW), which I also razed. And by 275 found and razed Ghengis' last remaining small city - Ning-hsia.

Not sure if it was a good idea to raze the far-away cities. Sure, it could've been an even stronger drain on the coffers, but it would've given a small production base up north, and prevented the Greeks from expanding. Razing the nearby city, right at the fork in the road that leads to the Mongols and the French was definitely a mistake - all it did is let the French build a city in almost the same spot anyway. (Of course, it's possible that if I had my own city there, it would have sparked tensions sooner, and they would've declared when I was less prepared, but it still seems a mistake in retrospect.)

As you already gathered, the French declared war on me right on schedule - 250BC, while I was still pointlessly meandering around Ghengis Khan's capital. I valiantly routed their 2-unit assault and began a counter-attack. Took the city at the crossroads (Rheims) and of course kept it this time (100BC). And then waited at least a couple hundred years for the catapults to get built and pulled up to the front, finally capturing Paris in 350AD.

At 500AD, I just learned the Alphabet, and I'm poised to continue the attack on the rest of Napoleon's territory.

On the religious front - I scored an early Buddhism, which didn't really give me much except that a bunch of Alexander's cities turned Buddhist, which caused him to convert to my religion. I must say that while I didn't really get any direct benefits from it - a couple of useless techs in unfair deals, I did get a good friendly buffer between myself and the Incas. Overall probably a good thing.

In a "state of the empire" kind of way, I must say that I don't have as many cities as I'd hoped for by this point, and I'm definitely starting to run short of funds. While a war is going, the continuous resources from razing and pillaging are helpful, but as I'm already somewhat behind in tech, and short of money, I may have a very tough time later on. In fact, my end game is quite weak, as I've only managed to actually win-win a game a couple of times, dispite numerous games. We'll see how it turns out.

 

[bulkins]

I finished in 2 hours and 11 minutes. Was anybody faster?

I was... 1 hour 03 minutes conquest

 

[/solar/]

Had great fun with this game. First civ4 Gotm.

Built capital on the spot, second city NE near rice, third due west of capital and fourth due north of third. Declared on Gengis in 775BC and knocked off his capital in 3 turns. kept it. While cleaning up gengis, the french declared on me sending about 3 archers towards my empire. that was 475BC, 25BC paris was mine and the mongols were history.

My army that was cleaning up the mongols went for alexander, who fell quickly now that i had catapults. I was also helped by a greek-incan war. 100AD and the french were gone. 250AD Athens. As 500AD rolls around, Alex has two cities left, and i have jaguars stacking just outside the borders of two incan cities, ready to take them on from 3 directions once alex is out.

2hrs 29 btw. and for a first prince win and about 5th civ 4 game overall im more than happy

 

[The Mad Swede]

For the first time ever I went for a fast conquest from the start. And what a great map for it!

I settled in place as I didn't see any big advantages settling anywhere else. I wanted a high production capital and the spot was good enough for that.

I founded a second city near the gems to the west in 2120 BC and started gearing towards war. France would be the first victim and when they founded a city to the northwest in the jungle it was time to strike. The war lasted from 1360BC to 900BC. I kept Paris and Orleans to the northeast near the wine.

Due to sloppiness, the barbarians captured Paris in 700BC but I took it back quickly. Despite this minor setback, the Barbarians didn't really bother me that much in the game. I used a lot of fogbusters to keep my outlying cities safe.

The next victim would be the Mongols. They had just founded a 5th city northwest of Paris which I decided was a capital offense.

I declared in 475BC, I capture their capital in 225BC and sue for peace (and techs ) in 125BC after razing their 4th city.

After this i convert to Buddhism to keep Huayna happy and capture a Barb city to the northeast along the coast. I also build the Oracle to give me Currency since it was a fast build in Tenochtitlan. It was completed in 25AD.

In 200AD I redeclare on the Mongols and raze their final city the turn after.

The next victim will be the Greeks who have the score lead, but I stalled for too long here. I will tell you more about this in the next spoiler.

 

[TRJS]

First GOTM and first attempt at Prince level.

Won't bore you with my basic approach except to say I am happy to have not lost.

One very stupid simple question I cannot seem to find the answer to.

How do I submit my save?

 

[AgedOne]

@TRJS
Welcome to the GOTMs. Glad to see you had a not lost in your first one !

If you go to the main site's GOTM page here http://gotm.civfanatics.net/ you'll see a link up on the top right hand side entitled "Submit C-IV GOTM".
Just follow the instructions after that.

 

[TRJS]

Thanks AgedOne. Very obvious once pointed out, as I suspected.

Will be submiting tonight.

Now I can get back to work.

 

[Thorrez]

Went for a really quick conquest (which I never tried before as I never plays small maps or below Emperor except for GOTM) with a Jaguar rush in mind.

Settled in place, fishing for a early working boat when straight to IW. Settled one more city (by the gems) and produced Jaguars only once I had IW for a long time. Once I saw a mongul worker mining the iron NW I attcked, made a mistake and attacked the mongul capital with to few Jags losing 3 and promoting thier achers for nothing before I pulled back. Regrouped after that and took 2 mogul cities (can't remeber if he only had two or if I razed any), went after Alex, starting to mix in axes once the mongul iron was hooked up. Raced all of his cities and directly went after the Incas iwth cats support at this time. By 500 AD 2 cites are captured and I also have a nice stack ready to take out France.

Mistakes:
-Teched for horse achers (with no horses available)
-Attacked mogul capital to early

Tech:
Turn off after construction (no alpha)

Buildings:
Barracks YES
Others NO

Wonders:
NO

 

[supergiu]

Well, to me to was my first GOTM, especially because it was at Prince level, just one level beyond my typical game play... I use to play at Noble.

I won't describe my gameplay, even because I do not remember, but to me it appeared pretty soon that the only way to win quickly was to go for early conquest. Actually, since I'm not that experienced I wasn't successfull...first Louis was conquered, then Gengis (he still has one city in a small island, who cares) and now I am going for Alexander.
Problem is Huyana is FAR way beyond me in tech and looks like uninterested in wars.

I have a couple questions:

1) I was looking that Alexander was a bit willing to DOW me...he massed troups near my newly conquered Mongolian cities. So I drafted some units and repaired me, but I wanted to avoid war, so I traded for just a few bucks Astronomy to him...He passed from 'cautious' to 'pleased'. I was pretty sure that then I never attacked me...but he attacked on the very next turn! How come???

2) Did anyone succeed in going for cultural victory ? I'd like to, since otherwise my score won't be comparable to others, more experienced than me. Problem is my 3 best culture cities are 10k (capital), near 5k the second and near 2k the third...I'm building Statue of Liberty but I think I need a lot of turns before I can reach Radio, and now I am very far from 500 AD...do you think I can do it? Or the only way to go is domination/conquest??

I'm having a lot of fun, hoping that next games will be of Prince Level...(I know, I know...you guys find it too easy... )

 

[jesusin]

jesusin, contender, goal fast conquest. Result: Conquest Victory 525BC. 6 hours.

The plan I dreamed with was this: 2 Warriors and 2 Charriots steal a Worker from a different AI each. All AIs are crippled and I take their capitals with Charriots or Jaguars without losing a single unit.

But I did a conservative builder start: Scout SW-NW, nothing revealed, settled in place. Research Fishing, build Worker. Change to build Workboat when Fishing is known, prioritizing hammers. Back to Worker after the Workboat. Research Agriculture and Mining after Fishing, to set the capital to full speed (14 hammers a turn). I thought everybody would have done the same thing, if settling in place.

So, at 2800BC I was working 3 improved tiles, I knew the location of the four AI capitals and I knew fishing, agri, mining and BW, while my first Warrior was out. Maybe it was too much a builder start, the first Worker stealer being out so late. But on the other side, maybe prince AI does not produce its first worker so fast... I should have played a test game... Anyway, my worst mistake came from stealing the Worker from Gengis. It should have been stolen from the furthest AI instead. I declared peace with Gengis-the-workerless and dowed all the rest of AIs. 1 Warrior roamed around each capital, while Jaguars came to the front. I shut down research after IW and AH, although I never needed the money. The first 4 Jaguars (I was thinking about sending only 3, but 4 seemed necessary) were sent to France, the following to the West, 1 lost in Paris, the other 3 razed the remaining French city.

The Warrior I sent to Alex was so stupid as to approach the capital for no reason. He got killed and I started to worry about the copper being connected. 1 Jag was sent there in a hurry while the rest took Gengis only city. Once it arrived, it found out that Alex's Worker had concentrated on the Stone instead of the Copper. The AI can only thinks about Wonders! Barbs were a constant problem in Paris, were I wanted to connect the Iron "just in case", so I finally sacrificed a Jaguar and sent him to fogbust, instead of sending him to the front. Killed the metal-less Alex while completing my long road to the West. Razed 2 Incan cities helped by the Barbs wounding the defending Archers. (Why were the Incans still building Quechuas? Do they think I am an AI? ).

Around 600BC I am fighting Barb Archers instead of Warriors, Cuzco gets 60% defense and I feel the first unhappiness from WW. While I waited for more Jaguars to arrive, 1 settler and 2 Archers leave Cuzco, so I take it with only 8 Jaguars, losing 4.

I didn't whip a lot this game, the tiles around the capital were so good that it was better to work them. I never built a Settler.
As for Wonders, I was able to keep the pace with the AI: I built zero of them, as they did.
Death dates: Napo 1400BC, Gengis 1280BC, Alex 825BC, Incans 550BC.


Why is my conquest faster than the conquests already posted? I believe that's because I dowed all AIs soon, and sent 1 unit to each of them. That way, all workers were sitting idle in their capitals. Also my Worker-until-workboat-is-available start seems stronger than most starting strategies posted, IMHO.

Why isn't my conquest going to be the fastest one? I believe I should have sent the first unit to the furthest AI, and it should have been built much much sooner. Obelisks in Paris and Karakorum were too slow to expand borders, maybe they were a mistake. Protecting Paris from barbs was expensive, maybe I should have just abandoned the city and sent all defenders to the front. On the other hand, I don't think that starting to build a settler while waiting for IW and AH when I had too many Warriors was a mistake, although it meant 24 lost hammers in the end. It gave me flexibility and I could have built a second city had there been some Horses around.

I imagine that a riskier strategy could have been much better, for example, exploring with both the Settler and the Scout, settling the capital next to Karakorum and killing Gengis before 3000BC… I am too much of a builder to have done that, though.

 

[Capt Buttkick]

@Supergiu:

1) Many AIs will attack (depending on circumstances) when they're pleased with you. Cathrine of Russia will attack even if friendly.

2) My guess is that they won't have made it by 500AD anyway, so strictly you'll have to wait until the next spoiler for that.
Generally speaking, I'd have pacified my oponents before I went all out for culture in a set-up like this. You never know when an agressive AI will attack if he's given half a chance.