GOTM 16 First Spoiler

[Capt Buttkick]

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

Congrats on a grest finish date despite your small setbacks

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.

Since you're going for worker steals anyway, maybe you could have started with a warrior, switched to WB and then back to finish warrior? Worker next after that?
I thought AIs always built a worker first on prince, in which case you should be just in time for the worker steal.

In retrospect, the fastest finish may be Fishing and then straight on to IW for the Jag rush. You can use your worker (and any workers stolen for chopping and mining grass hills).

 

[Khalid]

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.

Yes I see now that this is really true. It's a must for a fast cnoquest.

Great game, congrats.

 

[BSmith1068]

It's nice to see so many new players.

Welcome to TeHGhost, iluxan, /solar/, TRJS and supergiu.

@supergiu:

1.) Because Alex is psycho. He had probably already decided to attack you as well (since he was massing troops), so there was probably not much you could have done to avoid it.

2.) Like Capt Buttkick has already said - cultural victories will most likely come after 500 AD. People with this type of victory will post about it in the final spoiler.

@jesusin:

Congrats on the fast conquest time! While 500AD is a personal best for me, I am well aware that I still have a lot to learn about how best start a fast conquest. I too am a builder by nature, so not settling a second city never even entered my mind. In retrospect just building one and taking Paris and Karakorum would have been a good strategy. I also need to practice the art of worker steals (although I did have one)!

 

[Erkon]

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???

The AI prepares for war a couple of turns (could be lots of turns actually), and you can't stop the war by improving relations.

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

Are you sure about Cathrine? According to the xml-files, no AI will consider planning for war at Friendly.

 

[Capt Buttkick]

Are you sure about Cathrine? According to the xml-files, no AI will consider planning for war at Friendly.

Well, I may be misinformed. I picked it up in the General discussion thread not so long ago.
Edit: it may be Warlords, though?

 

[Erkon]

Well, I may be misinformed. I picked it up in the General discussion thread not so long ago.
Edit: it may be Warlords, though?

Strange. Both Vanilla Civ and Warlords have the same entries at NoWarAttitudeProbs for friendly in Assets\XML\Civilizations\CIV4LeaderHeadInfos.xml

At pleased, the following civs will stay peaceful: Asoka, Cyrus, Frederick, Gandhi, Hatshepsut, Saladin and Washington.

At pleased, the following civs are more likely to attack than the average civ: Alexander, Catherine, Louis XIV, Mao, Montezuma, Qin and Victoria.

I don't have the figures readily available for Warlords, only for Vanilla.

Also, different civs are sensitive to the power ratio in different ways.

To reduce risk to be attacked, ensure you don't have too low power rating, and garrison the front cities to discurage the AI from attack of opportunities. And most important, make your enemies hate each others instead of you ;-)

 

[CivSetä]

Wow, that was fast, 1h 7min.

Settled in place, built second city to the west on a plains hill, next to the gems and corn. Research order was mining-fishing-BW-IW-agr-AH-writing-alpha (stupid move, no one was trading with me!)-mathematics-masonry-construction, then shut down research. Build order was worker-fishing boat-warrior-settler-warrior-worker-barracks-jaguars till the end. In second city barracks-jaguars. Guess what I was planning? Jaguar rush, of course!

Built 8 jaguars, and attacked France. I wanted to keep going without stop, hence I decided to steamroll the continent from east to the west. France was easy, I kept Paris and razed two other cities. Hordes of barbarians were nasty surprise, because I forgot about raging barbs-option. Paris was fortunately nicely located, and it blocked barbarian invasion to my main land.

Mongols were not any harder, I declared war just after I got finished Napoleon. I kept their capital and another city, which had founded two religions. (Should have burnt it down, though.) I razed another city, and moved on to the Hyuana. At this point I was close to a getting construction, so I decided to keep more cities to block Greeks from expanding (and for points). I captured three incan cities, still without cats which were still on their way into a border, and razed two more. No more Incas.

My final move was annihilating Greeks. I had some cats and two elephants, so there were no problems. One army took care of southern Greece, and another one captured everything on the northern Greek highlands. My forces reached their last stronghold in most western cape of the continent around 400 AD, after violent battle the whole world was finally under my rule in 425 AD.

 

[Gryman]

Conquest Victory in 25 BC In about 1 hr 15 min. Settled in place built scout, settler, warrior, stonehedge, worker, barracks then JAG, JAG, JAG etc.... Teched Agriculture, BW, IW, then out to construction and set to 0%.

Second City was settled West to claim corn and gems, built barracks then Jags

War first w/ Mongols took Capital and razed 1 city and gave Woodsman 2 promotions to jags to aid movement on to Greece.

Alex had 2 axemen, one attacked a jag in jungle but the other i had to sacrifice 2 jags on. Huyna next, no Axemen, took capital and razed two other cities. Gave woodsman 2 promotions to all the units I could in order to get them back across to finish off Nappy along w/ cats.

Could have been much faster than this if I had paid more attention to workers (chopping) and I also spent several extra turns on construction when i ran out of money (should have chopped library and ran specialists to finish). However, jungle 2 jags were effective in reaching the enemy before they had stacks of axemen.

 

[jesusin]

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 think that you can do it. Now, if you are looking after points, you shouldn't have chosen cultural victory. In a cultural game you don't try to have a lot of cities, so you get less points.

As for what to do now, have you considered not researching Radio? Try turning up the culture slider to 100% and see how many turns would be needed to win. You could also select a secondary city to farm a GA: put 2 or more of its citizens to work as artist specialists and wait until the GP is born, you can use him to get 4k all of a sudden.

Good luck.

 

[Mad Professor]

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

Impressive. Well done.

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.

Now if I'd thought of that I might have been quicker too. Got that one tucked away for later...

 

[Mad Professor]

Prince, small pangaea playing Monty. A walkover early conquest thought I. Since early conquests are not my usual style and I am totally inexperienced in such a game (just check out how many space race victories I’ve got in GOTM’s…) I thought I’d do the obvious and go for a fast conquest with jags and horse archers. I decided to ignore religion and only get alphabet for extorting techs out of people I ran out of steam to crush before actually totally annihilating them.

So much for plans. I haven’t done too badly so far, but nowhere near as well as I hoped, and the game that remains for me will be a challenge, I suspect. It’s not quite the walkover I was expecting. I’ve played to 50AD as I write this.

I went fishing early to use sea tiles, but otherwise headed for IW absolutely as fast as possible to get the jags going. Then I threw in archery and animal husbandry in preparation for going to horse riding for the horse archers. Animal husbandry and my exploring told me the bad news about horses though. A long way off. Forget the horse archers for now. The fact that all the other civs were aggressive civs and that there was no copper, iron or horses in our home area was not lost on me either. Nice one guys. That makes a prince conquest attempt a little more of a challenge. Beating up barbarian and enemy civ axemen is a little more of a challenge if you don’t have any axes or horse archers yourself!

Meanwhile the jag production was cranking up nicely and I decided to hit Genghis first before he had a chance to unleash his Keshiks on me. I only planted one other city to this point apart from the capital, though I planted a third later and have kept Paris and Karakorum. Our French friend plonking a city right on the road I was building to Mongolia though changed my mind and I decided I had time to eat the French for breakfast as a warm up before thumping the Mongolians.

French war 1200BC – 675BC
I captured the offending city and razed it immediately and marched on Paris. So far so good. I had some rotten luck attacking Paris, losing several jags in 70-90 percent battles, and the barb axemen I met about then seemed to be swinging hand grenades instead of axes too. I took Paris and fended off the barbs anyway, but my army had taken the kind of beating I didn’t want it to take at this point. This set me back quite a bit and I lost some momentum. I went on and took Orleans to the NE of Paris, which was the Jewish holy city, only to lose it to barbs a couple of turns later (my rotten luck with battle rolls seemed to be continuing!) Anyhow, with the fall of Orleans, France was no more in 675BC.

First Mongolian war 500BC – 225BC
Once the remaining jags were healed and a couple more built I set out for Karakorum. Just as I was lining up for attack, Genghis planted a city on the same accursed spot the French had earlier. Right in my way. Oh well. I don’t mind really. I declared, razed the offending city yet again, and turned on Karakorum. Genghis had been having trouble with barbs obviously because his archers in Karakorum were garrison II and he had a few spare axes and a sword sitting around which he sent south into my area. He did a bit of plundering with those, and attacked a city I’d planted to the west of the capital, but I was able to clean that force up without loss of units about the time Karakorum fell. At this point I sued for peace, extorting a tech. He had one city left to the NW of Karakorum, and the barbs were still pouring in from the north there.

Second Mongolian war 75BC – 50BC
The instant the peace treaty ran out I declared again, went in and burned down his remaining city. A very short war!

Meanwhile I’ve been lining up jags on the Greek border. I can’t get at Capac without going through Alex, and they both hate me and won’t open borders, so it’s got to be Alex next. I’ll be doing a lot more burning of cities from now on. Both Alex and Capac have 5 cities each at 50AD.

Now at 50AD, I’m about 4 turns from construction and I’ll start pumping out cats to join the jags once I get it. I might shut down research after construction too. Alex is quite powerful, though not quite as powerful as I. I hope to break his back before the cats are needed, but I expect I’ll find the cats handy for dealing with Capac later, and perhaps for mopping up Alex. I’ll declare on Alex in about 5 turns time I think once my jags are all in position ready to go. Probably two pronged attack, one from west of my capital where he has a city on my border, and one from Karakorum where the stack that finished demolishing Genghis is located.

On the otherhand, Alex might declare on me before I declare on him - he "has too much on his hands" at the moment, and he's a mad dog when it comes to war. I don't care. It might slow me a few turns, but I'll eat him anyway. Just how quick my finish is will depend on how fast I can get through these last two guys.

 

[bio_hazard]

Contender- going for Domination or Diplo win.

So far things are going ok but I'm worried for the next spoiler (I stopped at 520AD). I settled in place, and built one city west (sw of gems) and one east along coast w/in reach of seafood and rice. Actually got a goody hut during early exploring, but only got experience from it.

Was just deciding who to go after first when Napoleon declared on me (I think- I may have declared on him- will have to check the log). He had cities SW and SE of Paris, which I took and kept (in retrospect, definitely should not have taken the eastern one. Then focused on Paris. I had some bad luck, and it took me three tries to take it. Got a couple of techs for peace, now will revamp economy and decide who to take out next. Didn't get any workers from France, so my land could use some serious improvement...

France founded buddhism, and both Greece and Mongols were buddhist as well. I'm amazed that neither of them declared on me yet, but it may just be a matter of time.

I really hope to have time to finish this game. Prince is more my level than the last couple of GOTMs, and it would be nice to actually win a game every once in a while!

 

[zafyro]

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

It seems you're playing standar joseki in your opening but got troubled by not fighting against enough handicap uh?

 

[Gnejs]

Base score: 624
Final score: 63635

Settled in place. Scouted west, then north, then east, so I met the bad guys in reverse order. Didn't know Genghis and Nappy were so close until I had almost started building Jaguars.

Build order in Capital:
Worker, Barracks, bunch of warriors, worker, then nothing but Jaguars

Research:
Agriculture - Mining - Wheel (goody hut) - Bronze Working - Iron Working - research to 0% (in 2240 BC, after only 44 turns... )

Wars:
2520-1760 vs Mongolia
I don't want GK to connect Iron so I declare early, stealing a worker and defending against his archers with a couple of promoted warriors. Once I get two Jaguars to help his single city falls swiftly.

1560-1160 vs Greece
I am in a hurry since there is both copper and iron near Athens. I am mostly worried about the copper, but as I enter Greece's borders I see that it isn't improved yet. Fine, this means I will only face archers. I send the bulk of my units towards Greece together with fresh builds in Karakorum.

1560-850 vs France
On the same turn I declare on Nappy just because he stupidly thinks he can escort a settler with only one warrior. I use fewer units here, basically only new builds in my capital but since there is no copper around I feel safe anyway. Once I get some numbers it is soon over. I lose some time due to some bad RNG rolls, but it doesn't matter.

975-725 vs Inca
Once Alex is gone I continue towards Huyana. Again, I know the location of the iron so i concentrate my attack in that area. Two outer cities fall easily but Cuzco is on a hill with 40% culture and 4 promoted archers + a couple of Quechuas. Most of my Jaguars have less than 10% odds. This could take some time... no, the AI again proves its incompetence. One archer leaves to guard the unimproved iron, one tries to recapture a city, a Quechua falls for a worker gambit. I have five Jaguars just waiting for this. Boom, Cuzco is captured.


Total time spent: 1h22m nice and quick

I am pretty happy with this game. Getting the Wheel from a hut was lucky and saved me some turns since my workers could road towards Nappy and Genghis some turns earlier. It wasn't necessary to shut down research as early as I did since I had some money from goody huts. At the end I had 500+ gold with -37 per turn at 0%.
I could perhaps have researched Animal Husbandry, now I won without knowing if there were any horses anywhere.

Spoiler :

Buildings built:
4 Barracks
1 Obelisk (in Karakorum)

Units built:
29 Jaguars
6 Warriors
2 Axemen
2 Workers

Units killed:
33 Archers
28 Warriors
6 Workers
4 Quechua
3 Settlers
2 Animals
1 Scout

Units lost:
11 Jaguars
3 Warriors
3 Workers
1 Axeman
1 Scout

 

[jesusin]

It seems you're playing standar joseki in your opening but got troubled by not fighting against enough handicap uh?

Hi, zafyro, nice to see you around. I would be glad to read your spoiler.

For anyone interested in understanding what zafyro meant, please read about the wonderful game of Go (Baduk, Weichi) here: http://senseis.xmp.net/?BasicRulesOfGo

 

[zafyro]

I did not post my spoiler as this was my first game of civ 3 in a looooong time so even when my start is quite similar to yours [excepting that I build a settler for a second city expansion to the west] I got troubled with all the things I had forgoten about civ I wanted to try again some of them, so I went a bit broader and let the AI develop so much that I finished using gunpowder...

Also I had terrible luck in my first combat against the frenchs loosing too many [4] jaguars against Paris [I hate archers on a city and a hill] and experienced two weird events:

1) first time I poped a resource by mining a hill [gems]
2) Barbarians apeared INSIDE my territory twice.

 

[BLubmuz]

Badly played game, aggressive it's not my favourite style, but with such neighbors...
Settled in place, warrior, WB, worker, warrior, settler
research: fish, poly, mining, wheel, BW, IW, priest, writing, alpha (to discover no one would trade with me).
Built 3 cities (capital included) then jaguars, jaguars and more jaguars.
DoW Napo first, to discover he has IRON hooked, and his axes was a pain for my jaguars until i manged to pillage that mine.
This slowed my war, together with bad RNG against his archers.
After Lyons, conquered without problems and the long time to conquer Paris, i sued for peace for a lot of early techs, to DoW exactly 10 turns later and wipe off his last city.

My big mistake was to research CoL, then math and construction, then literature (for HE) and shut off the research only so late caused me a strike after i took Mogolia, and a good part of Greece (pyramids and GL in Athens).

To be continued in next spoiler...

 

[Renata]

I gave this a shot, but man am I out of practice at Civ. I went for the usual Conquest victory, and took out the Mongols and the French very easily, but I got caught in that Nowheresville between sustainability and speed by the time I hit Athens. The two swordsmen, two phalanxes, axeman and pair of archers there ate up most of my army and left me with a bunch of 2% chances, so I called a halt. At 400 AD, I have a +9gpt at 0% research and am already behind in tech. I've gotten out of worse situations -- heck, I have more cities than the other two civs combined! -- but I only had time to attempt an easy game, which this no longer is.