[PTW] GOTM 170 England Emperor Diplomatic - Spoiler

[Più Freddo]

This is the thread where you tell us the whole story of your game and how in the end you did -- win, lose or retire.

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

 

[Più Freddo]

Just a reminder: If you are missing a particular thread, such as this spoiler thread which was due 15 September, please feel free to just go ahead and create it.

This is a community effort.

 

[CKS]

Another fun game. My military adventures lead to nothing, so I stayed pretty much on my big island, where I was safe. It was plenty big enough to keep me ahead of the AI, though not to get me 4-turn research.

Despite the despotic golden age, I want the Colossus. I settle on the coast and get to work. I also want the Great Light House, but I have to settle for the Great Library instead. This does me very little good, because the AI don't research worth beans. I learn nothing past the ancient age.

I mostly get my big island settled - the Zulu get a few towns in. I get one town on Mongol/Zulu island, and I settle a bunch of little islands. The Zulu attack and destroy my town on their island, I ally the Mongols, and the war goes poorly for the Zulu. Later the Mongols attack me and take my new town on their island. I ally the Zulu, and the Mongols mostly destroy them.

One tribe is destroyed before I meet them. China and the Mongols are doing well, and Germany is limping along. Everybody else is struggling to survive. I get to steam power long before anyone else, and discover I have no coal. I don't want to trade anyone up to steam power, because I'm worried that the AI might start to research, so I look around and find some coal I can steal with a cultural expansion. I send off my settler, establish the town, and then get attacked by a 2-city civ (Aztecs?). I wipe them out and now have coal already connected. The next interturn the Zulu town on my island flips to me, giving me a third source of coal.

I chug along through the industrial ages, taking AT and electronics from ToE and trading techs for luxes. I've got 4 tribes left alive besides me, and they are all reasonably happy with me. I figure I'll declare on the Chinese and ally everyone against them before holding the vote. Unfortunately, just a few turns before the UN completes, the Zulu (with their one city) attack. I can't get reinforcements over to the island in one turn because PTW transports are so slow, but I manage to cover my towns with the existing troops, and take them out the next turn.

Then I realize I have a per turn deal going with the Chinese that I'll have to break to declare on them before the vote. If I break it, the other tribes won't want to make a per-turn deal with me. Luckily the world is at peace and the Chinese have a military unit in my territory. I put a warrior next to it, make mutual protection pacts with the Mongols and the Germans, declare war and end my turn. They attack, everyone declares, I give my allies rubber and then hold the vote. They love me, and I finish in 1804.

My notes on the early game are below:

worker to cow, settler W to coast, scout south, sees ivory, set research to BW for Colossus
Build London, start warrior, worker roads, scout W&S. BW in 30
Hut gives map of southern desert
Warrior fortifies, start granary
2nd hut gives CB
Granary to settler
2850 learn BW, start writing. I think we are alone on our land.
2670 settle south of wheat.
Hut gives warrior code
2430 Hut is deserted, see barb camp
1790 Colossus
1425 writing to MM, 5 towns, 1 settler
1100 barb horses, 7 towns 3 turns to MM
1025 start Lit
800 meet Mongols who know the Zulu. I'm up writing, they are up masonry, the wheel, iron working, and mysticism
650 Land a settler on Mongol's land
610 Meet Zulu, Mongols and Zulu both know writing now.
530 GLH is built, turn into Glib
250 GL completes, learn a bunch of techs. Still 10 turns to republic
210 Meet China
130 Zulu declare war, destroy my town on their island. I ally Mongols for philosophy + 8 gpt
50 BC learn republic, revolt, 3 turn anarchy
10 BC Idiot Zulu horse runs off to destroy barb encampment and leaves the settler it is escorting alone. , Meet Korea

 

[templar_x]

i cannot make my final save: evertime i try the game crashes, but just after the You Won! pop-up. Once I even got past the warrior, but never to the "...a few more rounds" window.
So could someone PLEASE open the file, hit enter, learn Fission, change the palace prebuild to UN inter-turn and hold the vote. Vote for BJ. I saw the result several times now already. make the final save and hand it in for me. THANK YOU!
I will post my write-up right after I learnt that this went ok.
t_x



PS: thanks so much, Piu, for creating my final save file! i deleted the attachment after successfully submitting the game.

 

[templar_x]

only had time now to do some write-up, so i hope i post it even though nobody seems to have submitted my save yet...


I settled in place.

Had my first contact in 1450bc and my last in 800bc. 650bc saw all embassies. I did not want a despotic GA, so i started it in 550bc, with the GLight. i get the full 1st tier of the MA in 430bc. Lucky me.

War against Mongols for a 2nd continent started in 230ad, cutting off all my trade routes. In 290 i have them back.

In 410ad i again get all the 1st Tier freebies, also for the IA! but what i do not get, is an MGL. I prepared another centre in Mongolia, after long having built the FP just next to London, so the palace could easily be built anywhere else. War against Zulus follows, still no MGL. Another war against the last island towns of the Mongols… there you go, finally, with the 21st e victory, i spawn my MGL! And thus have to working cores from 770ad on, eventually starting some sure 4-turn research.

Out of the blue the Germans declare on me a couple of turns in the game. But i don´t mind, take the war happiness, in addition to all 8 luxes. In 1000ad everything is set up: the palace prebuild for the UN. I gift towns to the Aztecs o have them as my sure enemy. Introduce everyone who has not met yet to each other. Declare on the Aztecs and bring everyone else in against them. Including Germany. And now i hope for Fission, and that i can afford it…

But 3 out of 3 draw Computers, ugh. Fall back for Universal Suffrage, twice, to kill some shields off. 6 turns of self-research that i cannot cut to 5. well. In 1050ad i get Fission, change the prebuild and get to vote. 5 out of 6 vote for Boris Johnson. Montezuma for himself. Lots of kisses…


That was a fun game, and one in ages I managed to finish. Cool! If now I could only remember the PtW rules when I play a PtW game… again forgot about ring city placement etc. never mind. What would have really helped me, aside the obvious Fission freebie, would have been an earlier MGL. Shouldn´t be. Without it, I think the date is acceptable.

t_x

 

[Più Freddo]

i cannot make my final save: evertime i try the game crashes, but just after the You Won! pop-up. Once I even got past the warrior, but never to the "...a few more rounds" window.
So could someone PLEASE open the file, hit enter, learn Fission, change the palace prebuild to UN inter-turn and hold the vote. Vote for BJ. I saw the result several times now already. make the final save and hand it in for me. THANK YOU!
I will post my write-up right after I learnt that this went ok.
t_x

I've emailed you the save. (Did you mess up the wrong pediaicons.txt file when you had problems to submit COTM138?)

 

[templar_x]

Thanks again, Piu! I submitted the game.
With your question, I assume you mean the "Austrian" entry? Honestly, I have no clue, and I do not even remember the problems I may had with COTM138. I am kind of working (in my business, as a father) in a pattern that feels 24/7, and many things happen to feel like so distant, so very distant.
t_x

 

[greatbeyond]

Thanks again, Piu! I submitted the game.
With your question, I assume you mean the "Austrian" entry? Honestly, I have no clue, and I do not even remember the problems I may had with COTM138. I am kind of working (in my business, as a father) in a pattern that feels 24/7, and many things happen to feel like so distant, so very distant.
t_x

The crash before the option to save after winning appears, happens to me every time. I have researched this previously without ever finding an answer. Reinstalling doesn't work (for both Windows 10 and Windows 7). So, what I do instead? When presented with the first "..You have won..." screen, I just keep pressing the [escape] key on the keyboard to bypass each of the screens before getting to the option to save. Works every time.

The choice of all aggressive civs meant that getting a diplo win might be tricky. The choice of Archipelago meant it probably wouldn't be a relatively quick win.

As for the game, a super late Diplo victory in 1979AD. After the UN was built there were myself and 4 other Civs. Of course the Aztecs were going to be my opponent for the UN win. Around the start of the Industrial Age, Germany tried an ROP sneak attack on me which ended badly for them. I made peace with them as quickly as I could as they were going to be my ally. I managed to get them pleased with me due to gifting, MPPs, and shared wars with the Aztecs. The Chinese, who had been best friends with the Aztecs, also decided to make things interesting by trying a sneak attack. Again I held back thinking that I could get them back to pleased so they would vote for me. The Koreans had just 2 or 3 cities on the smaller islands and that meant I had to keep 2 of the four happy with me. It seemed I tried everything with them thinking I could convince them to vote for me but it never materialized. The Koreans tried the same ROP sneak attack as the Chinese and ended up getting wiped out before the Chinese. Of course in between this and the end, Germany got a lot stronger and managed to get a higher population than the Aztecs due to on and off wars with them. This caused them to be my opponent and so I had to block them from taking more Aztec lands and then had to gift the Aztecs several cities. The Chinese would never vote for me despite being sneak attacked by the Aztecs and being gifted resources, luxuries, and techs. In the end the Chinese had to be wiped out. At the end the strategizing paid off, but it delayed my victory for many turns.

The AI were hopelessly behind in techs for most of the Ancient Era and after that. I gifted them repeatedly to hope that they would help in making it a quicker game. The Russians were wiped out very early so that left just the Germans as the lone scientific civ and thus eliminated the possibility of using them as Templar_X was able to do. I was impressed by his rate of apparent research and will have to see how it was possible. I used Monarchy early on(for early wars) to get ahead of the AIs quickly and then later shifted to Republic to boost the economy. The one thing I can think of was perhaps I should have doubled the number of cities I had. I had both the starting continent, the Mongol/Zulu continent, and a couple of the larger islands to myself from the Middle ages on.

I had very little trouble with the "raging" barbs which was nice. On the other hand many of my battles with the Mongols and Zulu seemed to suffer from poor RNG results. With their longbowmen able to kill my riflemen but my cavalry unable to consistently defeat their inferior units. I was also disappointed that not one of my Man-O-War were able to enslave any enemy vessels.

Thanks for all your efforts Piu Freddo.

 

[templar_x]

couldn´t you have gifted the Russians a town of your own, so that they stay around? I had that planned for the Koreans, who never had more than 2 towns in my game, after losing a war to the Chinese. Absurdly, what they were left with was their own capital, AND BEIJING!!! For the rest of the game, it stayed like that. Germans and Russians stayed with 4 towns or so each and never warred each other (afair).
t_x

 

[greatbeyond]

I didn't expect the Russians to be destroyed so quickly and early otherwise I would have. The Koreans, despite never having more than 2 or 3 cities, were never trade friendly before they too were destroyed.

 

[CKS]

In my game, the Russians were gone before I met them.

 

[Lanzelot]

Korea was down to 1 town and Russia was on it's last legs in a war versus Germany, when I met these civs, so I gifted Korea and Russia a desert town on my home continent to keep them alive. That worked well, as shortly after, Seoul was taken by the Aztecs and Russia was taken over by Germany, but it didn't help me a lot: in the Industrial age, all three of them got Nationalism, and in the Modern age, all three got Ecology...
In the Middle age, all three got Engineering, which I was able to trade later when I researched Monotheism. So that was 1 out of 9 possible freebies

Another setback was my first attempt at taking over the Mongol/Zulu continent: I had landed approx. 10 swordsmen in Mongolia, took the first town, advanced to Karakorum, when out of the blue a large stack of Mongolian swords killed half of my force. The other half limped back to the beachhead town and was destroyed over the next 2-3 turns trying to hold that beachhead until I could ship reinforcements over. (I was mostly building libraries in my core cities at that time, so not many resources available for military.)
It took a couple of centuries, before libs, markets, aqueducts in the core were finished and I could afford building a new army for a second attempt. It also suffered from bad RNG luck and extremely heavy losses, but slowly managed to take over the continent.

Consequently it was very late, before I could setup a second core in Karakorum, and this delayed the entire game. Of course I did not get any MGL, and I did not want to do a palace jump, as I had built Cope & Newton in London... So I ended up cash-rushing things like courthouse, market, factory, coal plant in Karakorum, and also a cathedral in order to get it into WLTKD, and then it was doing 20spt and was able to hand-build the forbidden palace in 10 turns.
After that things got a lot better, and I was even able to research the remaining Industrial techs in 4 turns, but it was already too late: UN victory in 1295 AD.
Never had so much trouble in a UN game before...

 

[Garvarg]

i cannot make my final save: evertime i try the game crashes, but just after the You Won! pop-up. Once I even got past the warrior, but never to the "...a few more rounds" window.
So could someone PLEASE open the file, hit enter, learn Fission, change the palace prebuild to UN inter-turn and hold the vote. Vote for BJ. I saw the result several times now already. make the final save and hand it in for me. THANK YOU!
I will post my write-up right after I learnt that this went ok.
t_x



PS: thanks so much, Piu, for creating my final save file! i deleted the attachment after successfully submitting the game.

I had this problem as well.

It crashed just after the Historic "YOU WILL BE REMEMBERED AS..." Always on GOTM, never on COTM. In fact if probably tried reloaded after restarting the computer, turn it off and on, and just 20 more times tonight just hoping it would work.

Then I remembered what I did last time to get it to work. The mouse I use is cordless. No surprise there, BUT when I hit the enter button instead of clicking on the "X" in the bottom right corner, it works, and I get the "DO YOU WANT TO PLAY A FEW MORE TURNS?" page.

So try hitting enter, not clicking on the X's.
Let me know if that works for you.

Garvarg

 

[templar_x]

do i also have to use a cordless mouse for this?

I am joking, thanks for that hint, I will try and let you know!

t_x