GOTM 19 Final Spoiler

[LowtherCastle]

When I attack, I have a batch of bombard promoted cats which will take down the walls in one turn. Then I attack with CR-promoted cats, until defenders can be defeated with CR-promoted swords. I build much more cats than other units, and I loose many more cats than any other units. Knights are useful, but I prefer to bring pikes/crossbow/longbow/swords/mace/war-elephants with my cat-stack. Are you serious with 50% cats and 50% mounted?

I did pretty much the same as you, Erkon, except even less: I used cats exactly as you described, with CR-promoted Swords to bring down cities and threw in a few War Elephants and axes as "defenders" against AI axes. Not sure I needed more than 1 or 2 spears.

The cat/sword combo even worked fine against xbows and lbms later on. Just kamikazied an extra cat or two, many of which survived and then became 0.2-damaged wall-removers, so I didn't need to wait for them to heal.

I also didn't research Engineering, btw, but I was going for Domination rather than conquest, so I didn't need to cover as much terrain.

 

[jesusin]

Jesusin, what happened?

Please read my first spoiler. I tried to take too much in too little time. And I neglected my economy. I really thought I was doomed.

Regarding my stack's composition, I was refering to the final part of the game, when 7cavalry+7cats+1Choko would be my typical stack.

In the midgame (500AD) I would use a 5cats+5elephants+2Axes stack.


I forgot to mention that I discovered Chokos are great. 5 suicidal Cats can take all units in a city to 50% strenght. A 6th Cat would be of no use, callateral damage from cats can't go further than 50%. However, collateral damage from Chokos can indeed go further than that, so when defenders are much stronger than attackers (Knights attacking Grenadiers in my game) it is a good idea to sacrifice 5Cats+1Choko.

 

[Mighty Dwaarf]

After cautious opening decided it was time to attack. I needed more land to be able to compete seriously. I Dowed on Genghis 830AD and had reduced him to one northern tundra city by 1112AD. Standard Cat and Mace affair with few Choko's. I now had a city for GP farm and finally started to make use of Philo trait. Next was Lizzie, I decided her as Gandhi had a number of battle hardened troops after taking out JC. By 1400AD I had mopped up Liz adn pretty much caught up in tech, I Dowed on GW and took his city on NW of Lizzies land and was then content with my possessions.
At this point I thought I had a good shot at Diplo/space win I just needed to keep in touch techwise. I had lost about 20-30% on slider due to war costs but knew that I had potential to get to 90-100% now I had some half decent land numerous resources and a couple of holy cities. However a couple of problems began to arise. I lost both gold resources by Zapotec to Gandhis cultural spread I tried what I could but couldnt gain them back, I had tried to prioritise a GA from my Gp farm but missed 3-4 chances even though a GA was odds on. More importantly my techs were becoming untradeable, each time I tried to go for a tech that the 3 main techies (Gandhi, MM, Hatty) didn't have. Every time one of them would just beat me to it and then trade it off to the others. This soon amounted to me being considerably behind those three during the Industrial - early modern age. Gandhi completed Un in nid 1700's. Although I had the greates number of votes Gandhi was a couple of points friendlier with MM and Hatty and annoyingly was chummy with GW too. It was close as to whether he would have had enough for victory but I continued in the small hope of digging out space race victory. This sliver of hope dissappeared when Gandhi built Space elevator in 1798. He then forced in Enviromentalism in 1811, annoyingley had to drop sci to 80% due to losing state religion but it meant MM was now more popular with me than Gandhi as he lost civics bonus, but even with this he still voted for Gandhi in 1816 giving Gandhi victory.
Although I lost having never won before on Emperor I was pleased with my effort in this game as this was probably my best above Monarch game yet. With a little bit more luck I think I may have got closer to a victory. However it has highlighted a few other issues - namely to be more aggresive earlier which would have benefitted me considerably. If I had defeated GK 1000 years earlier (like some had achieved) I could have looked also at attacking a couple of Gandhis western cities, if I could have reached Delhi (buddhist holy city) this would have severly dented his economy and therfore slowed down his pace and also MM and Hatty. I will take these lessons (hopefully) to WOTM10 where there should be lots of opportunity for early war surely??.

PS congrats to Adama for his famous victory, I shall obviously have to start asking you for tips from now on

 

[Adama]

PS congrats to Adama for his famous victory, I shall obviously have to start asking you for tips from now on

Thanks to you and the others' help on this forum, I was able to finally have a game to submit, and not only that, a win. Surprised myself. I do appreciate the input you gave in previous months very much.

Don't think I'll be giving out expert tips any time soon, but one of the best I've read here was LowtherCastle's about not trying to pursue two or more differing strategies (and mixing metaphors, and tactics, too!) at the same time. A noob like me wants to experiment with everything ... a wonder here, a war strategy there, builderesque planning, a cottage economics course, and specialistically environmentally sound Great People without forethought or family planning ... Ah, but again, thanks to those here like yourself volunteering information and time to answer questions, I am learning.

Good luck to all!
Adama
Military Leader of the last remnant of the Human Race

 

[Erkon]

Please read my first spoiler. I tried to take too much in too little time. And I neglected my economy. I really thought I was doomed.

...
I forgot to mention that I discovered Chokos are great...

I read your first spoiler and I understand that the few mistakes had serious consequences. Still, from the spoilers I've read from your previous games, I would have expected you to bounce back and kick their a$$es. Of course, this is what you did eventually It's your own fault that I have such high expectations on your play

I got chokus before cats and I used lots of Chokus and I found them very useful until longbowmen. Then I needed the cats to bring down the cultural defenses.

 

[Conquistador 63]

I will never do a worker steal again! Stealing is bad!

Couldn't agree more! It's been a while so I don't remember 100%, but in my game I managed to steal 2 AI workers but even being escorted by warriors they were killed by animals on their way to Beijing!

Maybe I could have recovered, but a restart sounded more fun to me, even at the cost of not submitting this month. In the replay, I achieved a 16xxAD diplo win. It was indeed an interesting game for me.

I didn't build a single settler. I ran OCC until I built Pyramids (settled 2W near stone/corn, in same place of the 1st try), so I could run representation and benefit from the philosophical trait, keeping a good tech pace. I then proceeded to attack/eliminate Genghis and Capac. At some point Washington DoW'ed me, but was easily repelled. Near the end, I planned to attack him back for a give-away UN trick. After I built UN in one of his cities and returned it to him, I learned that being SecGen isn't enough to qualify for the diplo win - you have to be 1st in pop. Anyway, it was played just for fun so I "time-travelled" a few decades earlier to revert the donation and managed to be elected world leader nevertheless.

 

[jesusin]

I will never do a worker steal again! Stealing is bad!

I couldn't agree less!

Building a worker first is the usual opening. If you can steal a worker with your exploring warrior you are saving some 20 turns. Think of it. 20 turns at the beginning of the game! That's half a settler, which serves you to arrive to the dreamed-site sooner than that AI settler. Or that's 1pop+2Axes! The gain is not linear, is exponential as time goes by.

Regarding the subsequent war, what were you expecting of an aggresive neighbour with much more power than you, anyway?

Regarding animals, I would never stay with a worker next to an animal, even if protected by a warrior. I keep notes about the animals I have seen near my borders. And I am very careful when moving my workers out of borders. In this game, it took double time to my third stolen worker to arrive home than my first one.

The only thing I regret about stoling 3 workers from Gandhi is they weren't as quick working for me as they were working for him! Ah, and the English workers were too cautious, they would always go away or be protected by 2 Archers, even inside their border.

 

[Conquistador 63]

Of course worker-stealing can offer a high return on investment - the problem is that it implies a high risk too! Not a problem when playing HoF games (never been there myself) where you can always start a brand new game, but completely different in GOTM (well, in fact you can, just wait a month ).

And in my case I just quit in disgust after a panther (2 movement) appeared out of nowhere to kill a warrior and a worker with very low odds of success. Maybe I just need to learn to control my temper better.

 

[Thrallia]

hm...maybe next month I can compete with you for fastest diplo again? I didn't submit because I lost an late 1800s Conquest and lost my autosaves so I couldn't go back.

 

[Conquistador 63]

Next GOTM is Immortal, so I don't think I'll be able to pull out ANY victory condition...But are you playing current WOTM? Maybe we can have a good competition there...who knows?

 

[Thrallia]

I probably won't be able to either next month, but my chances will go up astronomically if I can learn to warmonger earlier and better...this WOTM is helping me out with that.

 

[MacBalt]

This one didn't seem easy to me. Ceasar and Ghengis both invaded (at different times) and I felt lucky to get away with a cultural victory by 1895 -- even with Godotnut's fabulous guide. Oh well, I'll take it.

 

[spacemanmf]

Hmmm, a fun game, unfortunately I couldn't find a way to win.

I was quickly hemmed in so found extra space by pinching cities off the English, Mongols and Incans before eventually getting rid of all of the English cities bar a one-tile island city.

The tech pace was horrendously quick and I was soon way way behind in techs, although a beeline to Steel secured me about 7 or 8 techs in trade - a great return. But after that, there were few techs anyone wanted.

A defensive pact with the Indians had me hoping for a Permanent Alliance, but Free Religion put paid to that.

Because of the size of my empire (12 cities or so in the end), I maintained a comfortable 3rd in score for a long period of time (behind Gandhi and Mansa), and even managed to get voted in as UN Secretary-General after a sustained period of growth, but more or less everyone preferred Gandhi over me (although I had good relations with most).

But the space race was lightning quick and, although I had all the Casings pretty much done, that was about it and the game was over.

I'm basically a Monarch player still struggling to get to grips with Emperor (a level which I rarely play). It's amazing to read the variety and skill of the wins so far in this thread.

Anyway, it's my 29th submission out of 29 GOTM/WOTMs so far (I submitted WOTM10 a few days ago) - not a bad record!

 

[da_Vinci]

Anyway, it's my 30th submission out of 30 GOTM/WOTMs so far (I submitted WOTM10 a few days ago) - not a bad record!

So is that you listed as spaceman (no mf) in the global rankings? And where did you find the extra XOTM to submit? 19+10=

dV

 

[spacemanmf]

Getting a wee bit ahead of myself there - well spotted! Now edited to reflect the fact that I have only done 29 of them... Cheers! All the pre-match discussion of GOTM 20 had obviously got me a little confused.

Anyway, yes it's me, spaceman, with or without the 'mf'. I bucked the trend (purely by accident!) and signed up to the forum way after I submitted my first GOTM, finding that someone had already taken 'spaceman', the rotters.

I am slowly creeping up the global leaderboard by default (i.e. cos I submit every game!).