GOTM 18 Final Spoiler

[tal77]

Hi!

This is the second time I play GOTM, and the first time I submit it (I played the GOTM17, but didn´t finished it).

Has a rookie, I builted my first city in the place the settler beggins (next time I'll try to pay more attention to the starting place) .

My game hasn´t much story, I was allways way behind Washington, in tech and in power, so I didn´t expand much. When I met the other civ´s I realized that I was behind them to, exception made for Qin Shi Huang and Mansa Musa. So I just tried to survive until the end, in that I have succeded !! LOL. I lost the space race for Catherine. ( I payed tribut to her many times, she was allways angry with me, and I was affraid that she could start a war)

I´m looking forward to the next GOTM

 

[Harbourboy]

Wow, lots of space race losses here. We're in good company, it seems.

 

[Tosti11]

First GOTM, first game on Monarch, about fifth or sixth CIV game. i got the game late and was never much better than a prince/monarch civ 3 player due to lack of time. same thing with this game, but i love to play.

I played contender class. I fell behind early to Wash, but was able to mount a mace, cat, elephant war that even took some cities of his after he beelined for cavalries. I kept researching to get cavs of my own, but ended up taking most of his cities before i had grens or cannons. After I had secured the whole island, it was pretty late in the game. I set up about five or six production cities and built all the research production buildings to catch up in both. I was way behind in the space race when i started, but i caught up quick.

I lost a space race to the Incans by four turns. i would have pulled it off had i not missed the Engines tech. i thought i had researched all the right techs and when i finished building my last piece of the ship and didn't win i knew something was amiss. Quick research and build, but was just too late. I missed space elevator by 1 turn, so knowing the spaceship parts and/or getting the space elevator and i would have pulled this out.

It was a good first GOTM and first Monarch game for me despite the frustrating finish. Learned enough to be playing all my games on Monarch and will probably move up soon. want to win my next gotm.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Diplomatic Victory 1660 AD.

Founded Karakorum on the plains hill SE like many others. The extra hammer seemed more important than fresh water given the extra health from the expansive leader.

Built a worker first then a couple of warriors and a work boat. Researched AH, Fishing, Mining, Pottery and BW first.

Met Washington around 2920 BC. Didn't meet anyone else and assumed that we were alone on a continent. A little later I stumbled over a wounded American archer and decided to kill him off. Maybe not the best move, but I wanted to force myself into an early war. Researched Archery and HBR and founded Beshbalik in 2400 BC so that copper, horses and cows were all inside the initial 8 workable tiles. Again the health from fresh water seemed less important than getting copper and horses immediately.

By 1800 BC I'm building axes in both Karakorum and Beshbalik. In 1440 BC the barbarians in Tartar surrender to the mighty axes and I keep this city that is well placed next to the gems and with cow + rice within the fat cross. I now have 7 axes, 2 archers and 2 warriors. The archers and one of the axe's has reached the American borders looking to pillage and wrec havoc. The copper mine near Washington is the primary target. At the same time a work boat is scouting the American shores. HBR is almost done. Turfan is founded in 1080 BC near the clam and the gold. Boston is captured in 925 BC. The Copper mine has been pillaged and my 5 axes and 4 Keshiks are patrolling the American lands. Washington has managed to build only a couple of axes and one spear before the copper was taken from him. The work boat has left our local waters and is doing some island hopping to the east. The American war rages until 350 BC that marks the end of the American civilization. Washington and New York are captured and Philadelphia and Atlanta are razed. The world will never know the taste of the burger or the sound of Elvis....

Around 500 BC the island hopping work boat finds Mansa and later also Catherine and Capac. Alphabet is discovered around 100 BC and tech trade starts. Ning-hsia is founded in 100 BC to grab iron, cow and rice and in 50 BC the barbarians of Phoenician surrender their precious city on the ivory coast to my veteran Keshiks. The Mongol empire is now large with 9 cities spread across the continent and maintenance costs are substantial. Science slider is around 30-40%.

Now follows a long period of economical recovery. In 860 AD the Colossus is built in Karakorum. A few years later New Sarai is founded to aquire marble and build the GLib, Heroic and Natl. Epics. In the year 1010 AD a brave Mongol caravel discover that the world is indeed round (circumnavigation). At the same time contact is established to Quin Shi Huang and Elisabeth. In 1150 AD Cathy decides that allthough she likes men in general she doesn't like Mansa in particular and declares war. 1200 AD she comes to me asking for help in this war. I'm considering Diplomatic Victory and agrees to DOW Mansa even though I don't intend to do any figthing if it can be avoided. I have spent a lot of hammers in tech buildings by now and that leads me to the conclusion that I should prefer Diplomatic Victory to Domination. The game plan is now to research Astronomy and launch an attack on China and then England in order to gain a large population. The UN will be built in one of the captured english cities and given back to Elisabeth in order to have a smal, unpopular opponent in the UN votes.

Astronomy is learned 1330 AD and the Chinese war is started in 1350 AD. I did a Liberalism slingshot to Steel in preparation for this war - probably not the best choice since it was off the Mass Media beeline. The cannons did, however, help the war that was short and sweet and ended in 1480 AD when the last Chinese city was captured. In the meantime Communism had been researched and the Mongols had revolted to State Property to save maintenance in the fast growing empire. After the troops had healed it was time to pay the English a visit. In 1515 AD war breaks out and lasts until 1575 AD when severe WW makes further war pointless. At this point in time 7 english cities have been captured and one more city is aquired as a part of the peace deal. Taj Mahal is finalized in the same year and in 1585 AD a second Great Engineer is born in Karakorum (Karakorum had Ironworks + forge which allowed for hiring 4 engineer specialists. It also had the National Epic.). The two engineers are rushed to Coventry where they build the UN in 1615 AD. The city is immediately turned over to Elisabeth making her my opponent in the UN elections. Switch civic to Hereditary Rule which immediately makes Cathy and Capac friendly towards me. Now enter is pressed until 1660 AD when the diplomatic victory is won with a huge margin since both Cathy and Capac voted for me. Mansa had been almost wiped out by Cathy and Elisabeth was also down to a few cities after the war against the mongols.

All in all a good game without any big blunders but still with plenty of room for improvement. The slingshot to Steel was questionable. China could have been defeated without cannons and in retrospect I needed only one English city to do the UN give-away. A slingshot to Scientific Method or Physics would have saved some turns. Taj Mahal came a little too late and the same can be said for GLib and the Colossus. In general I didn't have enough focus on specialists and wonders.

 

[Harbourboy]

Clever move, Fredriksberg, to gift the UN to England so your buddies would not be running against you. I will have to remember to try that one in the future.

 

[JackOfClubs]

I had another space race loss in about 1920AD. Again, I lost to that damned Huayna Capac.

Short story is that I spent the whole game taking over the main continent and then was too weak to attempt a naval invasion of anyone else.

Same here, except Huey launched in 1952.

As I noted in the first spoiler thread, I delayed attacking Washington until I had a sizable army on his border. I knew at the time that was dangerous, but I thought I doing fairly well. As soon as I declared, Washington upgraded his Archers to Longbows. Oops #1.

The battle began in the early 300s and I thought I could get it over with by about 1000. I razed Chicago at the marble isthmus fairly easily but with more damaged troops than I had expected. I had planned to raze all of his southern cities, but I noticed that Philadelphia was the Confucian holy city. I decided, against my better judgment, to take it. Long term this wasn't a bad decision but the early jump in maintenance costs caused my economy to tank too soon. I should have just left it until later or taken it and sued for peace while I built infrastructure, but I carried on the war. Oops #2.

Having the holy city I could see all of George's Confucian cities which I assumed were his whole empire. I didn't notice the island off the eastern coast (which turned out to be the Christian holy city -- this explains why it wasn't the same religion as the rest of the American empire. The AI usually don't bother to spread their religions via missionaries to cities that already have a religion.) So I made my plans based on the assumption that George had about 5 cities left. I normally would have sued for peace at this point while my armies were healing, but I thought I could win farily soon. Also had a slight tech disadvantage and I wanted to pillage some of Washington's cottages to fund deficit research, so I continued fighting. Oops #3.

Shortly after I declared, I met Mansa, Huey and Catherine. This puzzled me a little as it seemed too early for optics. This should have raised a red flag that I was dealing with some run away techies on the other continent. Also, Mansa was in a galley, which should have puzzled me more than it did, but I was busy fighting Washington. I used the opportunity to trade techs and didn't really think more about it. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but in this case lack of curiosity killed my civ. I really should have sent a galley or even a work boat out exploring the coast much earlier, but having a daisy chain of islands is such a rarity on continent maps that I have lost the habit of early seafaring. Oops #4 (but really Oops #0 since it was a violation of the law that the first priority is early exploration).

Well, I eventually noticed the faint color of Washington's border off the NE coast of the continent and decided to open up the trade window. I thought he only had two cities left (Wash DC and New York) but in the window I saw Los Angeles, Atlanta and Seattle as well. I immediately extorted a tech for peace since it was obvious I wasn't going to win an overseas war quickly with my current lack of transports. I had destroyed, taken and pillaged Washington's territory to the point where he was no longer a threat, but it was now the early 1300s and my own empire was vastly behind the other continents.

I spent about 300 years building infrastructure, researching and gearing my military for a trans-oceanic conquest. Sometime during this period, I met Qin and Elizabeth and also bought Cathy's world map so I had a pretty good idea of what I was facing. It didn't look good. All of the other civilizations were financial, and I was close to none of them in technology. At this point I pretty much figured I was going to lose but I was determined not to go down without a fight.

In the early 1600s I renewed my war with Washinton (who had founded Islam and Taoism in the meantime). Since Cathy and Huey were both hindu, I turned off my state religion. I would have liked to get a hindu city of my own so that I could join the coalition, but it was not to be. I did join a war with Cathy agains Mansa, and later got Qin to join in, so I thought diplomacy might save my bacon, but I never managed to get above pleased.

I destroyed all but one of Washinton's cities, Seattle, which was on a one-tile island. I really didn't want to waste time and troops with an amphbious assault, so I left him until later. In the meantime, Cathy had reduced Mansa to 2 cities on the west coast of their continent and negotiated peace. Qin had dropped out of the fight sometime earlier so I was alone in a war with Mansa that had not cost a single casualty so far.

I built up troops around his most accessible city, planning on walking overland to take out the other city later. This allowed me to carry on the invasion without bothering to build Galleons. By this point I had rifles but I was trying to get up to infantry and transports before going full-scale war against either Huey or Cathy. I got the first city, but Cathy decided to re-enter the war and took his final city when my troops were one square away. This wasn't a big deal, but I had planned on building airports in both places in order to assist my invasion.

Well, to make a long story short, Huey finished the Apollo program somewhere in the 1850s. At this point I was sure the game was lost since I was nowhere near the point where I could afford to go to war with him. I had riflemen and he had had Mech Infantry for several years. I thought about getting Cathy to attack him, but sometime previously they had formed a defensive pact. So the only war that was possible on this continent was me against the two most powerful civs in the game? Not going to happen.

Qin had been asking me for several years to join his war with Elizabeth, but I had other things to worry about. Both of them had small outpost cities on the edges of my continent that I had been trying to flip culturally. (I know, I know. But I really liked doing this in Civ III and I haven't quite given up trying in Civ IV even though it is now next to impossible.) Sometime in the early 1900s, I decided to go to war with Liz, just to give me something to do while waiting for Huey to finish his spaceship. I threw large quatities of infantry against her Mech Infantry while her scores of bombers devastated my continent. I captured Dover a turn before losing the game to Huey; the very definition of a Pyrrhic victory.

In spite of my early mismanagement of the American war, I really enjoyed the challenge of this game. I usually get frustrated when there is no hope of turning things around, but this map had multiple challenges to keep me interested even after I realized I was going down. Kudos to the designer.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Clever move, Fredriksberg, to gift the UN to England so your buddies would not be running against you. I will have to remember to try that one in the future.

Thanks. It's not my idea and I don't know who to give credit for it. Before you try this make sure that the city you build the UN in can actually be given away! The AI won't accept any city you choose. Often you need to choose a captured city. Having a couple of great engineers handy will save many turns building the UN. Alternatively you can change civics to Suffrage and cash rush.

 

[Lexad]

Actually you can just beat crap out of some AI noone likes, grinding him to 1-2 cities and gift him any city you build UN in - he will accept.

Darn, so much time spent to be outpaced by 15 years! Good job, Erkon!

 

[Erkon]

...
Darn, so much time spent to be outpaced by 15 years! Good job, Erkon!

Thanks! I'm sorry, but we can't let you win every time

And yes, it was rather tedious at the end of the game.

 

[Vynd]

The mad swede: I did not know that tactic, [giving away the UN city to a nation everyone hates] is it really ok to use in GOTM? (Sounds like using a bug in the game to me)

This occurred to me as well but after thinking it over I believe it ought to be legal. If it was a gimmick that would let you win a Diplomacy victory no matter what then it would clearly be broken. But in reality this tactic still requires a fair bit of effort. For it to work you need to:

• Be first in population, or else after giving the UN away you won't be one of the candidates in the voting.
• Arrange things diplomatically such that the large civilizations like you, and there's a small civilization that everyone hates. This will enable you to get the necessary votes.
• Build the UN in a city that it is possible for you to give away to the small, hated, civilization.

It seems to me that it is entirely possible for someone to attempt to use this tactic to win, but fail to achieve one or another of the conditions listed above. So it's not an automatic win. It sounds easier to do than it probably is in practice (I haven't tried it) because of course by the time you get to the "giving away the UN" stage you'd pretty much know if it is going to work or not and thus would only go ahead with it if it'll get you the win.

I see a connection here to "backdoor domination" wins. What basically happens in a backdoor domination is that someone has more than enough population to get a domination victory but not enough land area. So they build the UN and use their huge advantage in population to vote themselves a diplomatic win even though everyone hates them. For the most part it's just a way to end the game earlier. If the human player was willing to keep going, then given the advantages he already has he'd almost certainly get to a true domination victory eventually. It's just that building the UN and voting himself in is so much faster.

With this "UN giveaway" tactic we once again are talking about a human player who is first in population (or else it won't work anyway). Just like the backdoor domination player, he's fought at least one big, successful war (to gain that population and to create the patsy that will be receiving the UN). Well if the human player were to simply continue building up his population and beating down AIs he would soon be in a position to win via... backdoor domination. So the UN giveaway is to the backdoor domination what the backdoor domination is to regular domination. That is, it's just a way to get a most-likely-inevitable victory over with somewhat faster than would otherwise be the case.

 

[Lexad]

It's all in SGOTM3, CFR teams and Murky Waters employed this tactics.

 

[Frederiksberg]

It's all in SGOTM3, CFR teams and Murky Waters employed this tactics.

...and so did Gipsy Kings and Memphis Blues and probably more teams. I wonder if there is a common source for this strategy? The Murky Waters guys made a feeble attempt to take the credit but that was easily refuted - see Murky Waters SGOTM3 Thread post #1774 and onwards .

 

[Lexad]

It's kinda obvious when you sit there for a long time and ponder. In our team I came up with the idea and I assure you nothing but knowledge of game mechanics was used.

 

[Frederiksberg]

It's kinda obvious when you sit there for a long time and ponder. In our team I came up with the idea and I assure you nothing but knowledge of game mechanics was used.

I didn't mean to imply that there was any cheating involved, I was just wondering if the tactic had been mentioned somewhere in the strategy discussions in the forum...

But I guess you're rigth - it is kind of an obvious strategy when you think about it .

 

[JackOfClubs]

• Be first in population, or else after giving the UN away you won't be one of the candidates in the voting.
• Arrange things diplomatically such that the large civilizations like you, and there's a small civilization that everyone hates. This will enable you to get the necessary votes.
• Build the UN in a city that it is possible for you to give away to the small, hated, civilization.

Doesn't it also rely on the AI to propose the vote for a win? I have heard that they tend not to raise the question unless they have a strong chance of winning.

Or do you only give the UN city away after you have been elected Secretary? That isn't mentioned in Frederiksberg's summary, but I suppose that is a logical first step. I assume you still retain the position even after losing the city? Never played this way so it is far from obvious to me that this would work, but it clearly did in this case.

 

[Lexad]

If you're first in pop and have good support, you're elected Secretary even after you give away. Then you propose the vote.

 

[LowtherCastle]

...and so did Gipsy Kings and Memphis Blues and probably more teams. I wonder if there is a common source for this strategy? The Murky Waters guys made a feeble attempt to take the credit but that was easily refuted successfully trademarked the maneuver -- just check next time you're in D.C... - see Murky Waters SGOTM3 Thread post #1774 and onwards .

To me, it's just a variation on the Palace Jump from CivIII (and before?). The difference is only that instead of moving your palace from 1 city to another, your moving the UN from 1 owner to another.

 

[Lexad]

Well, we did both - first moved our palace in our most productive city to capitalize on Bureaucratic bonus to hammers - had no GE - then moved it out simultaneously with finishing UN construction to be able to gift the city

 

[LowtherCastle]

Well, we did both - first moved our palace in our most productive city to capitalize on Bureaucratic bonus to hammers - had no GE - then moved it out simultaneously with finishing UN construction to be able to gift the city

LOL! What a waste of time. No wonder you finished slower than CFR Vanilla... goodjob

 

[Conquistador 63]

Sometimes I think I have as much fun reading these spoilers as I have playing the game itself! I just need to quote a few nice remarks before telling my own story:

Fun map, nice twist with all the Financial AIs.

Good point! Or maybe I was the only one who didn't notice it?

Objectives:
1. Minimum inpact on RL
2. Win
3. Good score

Those are mine:
1. Same
2. Same
3. Fast finish

Diplomatic Victory 1660 AD.
....
All in all a good game without any big blunders but still with plenty of room for improvement. The slingshot to Steel was questionable. China could have been defeated without cannons and in retrospect I needed only one English city to do the UN give-away. A slingshot to Scientific Method or Physics would have saved some turns. Taj Mahal came a little too late and the same can be said for GLib and the Colossus. In general I didn't have enough focus on specialists and wonders.

I believe Erkon said he and Gnejs played alike but had very different finish dates. Well, I played very differently from Frederiksberg, but finished some 12 turns later. Not that much, but no award for me this month

At first I thought I had played a good game, but it turned out it was efficient but not effective.

Long story short. I had built Pyramids in 250BC. To capitalize from it I tried to run a specialist economy with representation (also got the GL in 740AD) to recover from a somewhat overexpanded empire.

I had been stockpiling cats/axes for quite a while to go for Washington when his religion spread to me (720AD). MM also shared it by then. I then converted, looking to get allies (also good tech traders) for a diplo win.

I reached Liberalism in 1300AD, taking Astro. I only met Qin/Liz in the 1300's.

My first war was declared on HC in 1550AD, and I brought along MM. Too bad I could never bribe Washington into wars. I had no idea he was so timid! Things got even more interesting when Qin chose unwisely and declared on me in 1570AD. He landed a few maces which were quickly taken care of. Meanwhile, my outdated troops managed to take 2 minor coastal cities from HC.

I gave HC peace in 1590AD, as I saw Cathy coming to his rescue. She declared on me the same turn, attacking from HC lands, so I couldn't retaliate. I liked that, the AI is not completely dumb. Anyway, I lost those cities but the stage was set for the diplomatic battle.

Next step was to take the battlefield to the Chinese lands. Beijing was the first to fall in 1640AD. I captured 7 more chinese cities until 1710AD, when I stumbled upon a heavily defended one and game was pretty much over anyway, so I gave Qin the peace he needed (not before sending Liz to war with him in the same turn) .

I reached Mass Media in 1675AD. The UN was ready a couple turns later, with a GE, 2 chops in the city which had the Ironworks. Meanwhile, I was running my allies favorite civics: Universal Suffrage, Free Markets, Free Religion, which helped to get the coveted +8 standings. A few gifts also were thrown in just in case.

The Secretary General and the final vote were pretty straighforward, although not by quite a large margin (see screenshot).


At first I thought it was neat to get MM and build the UN at roughly the same time I acquired the necessary votes, but on hindsight, my tech pace was not brilliant. Most likely because I did not emphasize cottage spamming as I usually do. Early representation and the 9 beakers/turn can be misleading, especially for a non-philosophical leader.

Thanks to the staff for yet another fun game!