GOTM 19 - First Spoiler (0 AD)

[LowtherCastle]

Initial four cities.

Spoiler :

As I said in the pre-game discussion, I settled E,E and went for the Moonsinger Swordsman Rush. This starting location was good for my military production, but messed up my Gold City placement, because my capital, Lowther Castle, needed the rice. So I settled my second city, Coppertown, near the copper in 2650BC, and started making axes immediately after the barracks. It never grew past 4 (or 5, I forget). THen Gandhi screwed my GOld CIty placement even worse by preventing me from settling on the river, so I had to settle for the desert spot, getting both golds and the cows. That city never grew past 3. Gandhi would pay for that crime dearly. He would be the first trophy on my mantle. My 4th and final city ws to be Gems City, but before I could build that settler, Lizzy built it for me. I would capture it in 1150BC. I also built barracks in LC and Gold CIty. Then I cranked out nothing but Swordsmen for a while. My research got slowed quite a bit by not getting those two gold mines on line for a long time, but it was nice to have a bunch of axes sooner.

Wkr Robbery

Spoiler :

• Poor Lizzy got DoWed by cruel Mao 3 times during this game. But I had mercy on her--I didn't enter her bedroom until 485AD. She provided me with my second wkr (built my first) in 3220BC. I actually had a chance a few turns earlier, but restrained myself because I wanted finish BW to find out if copper was going to be close enough to protect myself if other AIs caught my warmongering virus from me. So on my way back, the silly wkr tempted me again and whamo! he was mine.
• Hyuana Capac irritated me from teh beginning. He didn't really do anything wrong, he just bugged me. SO I stole his worker in 1870BC. It was safe to do, because no one liked him too much at the time.

With three wkrs, I was able to build my iron mine and other improvements pretty fast.

Warring

Spoiler :

I decided pretty early on I was going for Domination. WIth 8 AIs, I wasn't sure I could take them all out with only Swords and Cats, so Conquest was too risky.

I actually never got to see most of HC's and LIzzy's land before I attacked them in the AD's but it seemed like they were landlocked and that most of the land was to the East. Mansa Musa was doing very well reseach-wise, so I thought I needed to target her asap. Furthermore, Hatty was kicking up a storm with her research and Wonder production and JC was doing well too, so I decided my first campaign would go Gandhi>JC>MM>Hatty.

Gandhi took a quite a while, because I was still gearing up. I Dowed him in 1000BC, razed 3 cities and kept 3, finishing him off in 430BC. I imediately went onward toward JC, Dowing in 370BC and easily eliminating him in 100BC, keeping 5 of 6 cities. He turned out to be a breeze so I think I was lucky to catch him before he had finished REXing.

Next was Mansa, but he had massive military build-ups and everyone under the sun loved him. I didn't want Lizzy or HC to backstab me, and I didn't ever plan to DoW Washington, so I decided it was better to go after Hatty. Anyway, by that time she had built Pyramids, GLib, Stonehenge, Parthenon, Oracle, etc., so she was under-defended and rich as all get out. SO I DoWed her in 35 AD. But just before that, I noticed that GK was not liked by anyone and my production was able to start a new offensive, so I DoWed GK in 10 BC.

In 305AD, I finished off GK, keeping all 4 cities. In 410AD, I made peace with Hatty, leaving her 1 city, so I could get Alphabet. I didn't need it, but I wanted to know where the rest were in terms of teching. This may be a mistake, because it will divert some of my troops from my ensuying Mansa campaign, when I decide to come back and take out her last city, 10 turns from now.

With the GK war finished, I decided I now needed to open two Western fronts, Lizzy and HC. I DoWed HC in 470AD and LIzzy in 485AD. Soon I will also DoW Mansa Musa, my final campaign before ending my warring. But I expect a big fight from him because he has tons of units and my Eastern production is not as good as my western production. In fact, I have decided to take a risk. My deficit is now -166:coins:/turn, and I have a city perfectly placed for my FP, with tons of forests to chop, but instead I'm going to chop units for Mansa Musa. I may regret this decision. We'll see.

Research

Spoiler :

• My first goal was to hook up iron, so I researched BW(3250BC)>Wheel(2890BC)>IW(1750BC). Luckily I had iron in the fat cross of Lowther Castle. So that was hooked up in a few turns using 2 wkrs.
• I decided to do AH(1360BC) next for the Cows and to know where horses were.
• Lizzy built Gems City (she called it York for some typically inane British reason) near my gems, where my swordsmen planned to sharpen their swords, but I decided to keep her city placement, meaning I needed an obelisk to get both gems in the fat cross. Mysticism(1180BC). Her placement gave me horses, which were just outside of the Coppertown fat cross, unfortunately.
• Next I wanted Writng(940BC)>Maths so I could build cats, but I also wanted CoL so I detoured to Meditation(715BC)>Priesthood(655BC)>Maths(565BC). At that point I said, "Oops, I need Construction for cats...". Well, I chose CoL(460BC) before Masonry(400BC)>Construction(190BC), because my warring was getting expensive and I needed to lower my maintenance costs with some half-priced CHs.
• After that I pretty much shut down research except to quickly research Fishing(40BC)>Sailing(10BC) for galleys and Hunting(5AD) for War Elephants.

 

[Mutineer]

Well, I started by moving settle on plain hill. Other plain hill. I see furs, thinking, fine. Settle there, miss corn, but still reconable city.

Then build cooper and gold city.
Her eis picture of initial cities from 140AD save:

Spoiler :

Well, axes to Khan.
715 BC Declare on Khan.
Beshbalic on corn went easy, 700BC.
And then I made alittle error.
I was waiting for 3 more axes to join my 5 axes 1 spear army, to take 3 archer 1 spear hill capital. so, next turn i attack with out cheking city.

after 5th axe die I decided to check. and what I see? Khan move settler with 2 more archers. Nothing to do but to sped the rest.

3 units win, 2 archers left.

Next turn, 550BC Liz declare on me!
Well, my power fall, she small blood.

To hell with capital, I decided, axes to liz.
Cupture York, 430 BC on gems,
265 BC raise due city and see I do not have enoght army to go after capital.

So, I made peace 235BC, back to khan.
55BC took his capital and made peace to get some tech.
95AD redeclare and 125 AD Khan bite the dust.
I was moving axes in direction of Capac, but he beat me to it and declare on me 155AD.

So, there I am about 500AD, mostly cleaning up capac.

 

[feuerkobra]

Hi everybody,

I see from the reports here, that struggles for domination/conquest are preferred and mostly going slow but steady. Same in my game. In the pre-game discussion I considererd building the pyramids for GE points and research boost thru representation. Well, that turned out to be only "half" fitted to the map and the other settings:

My first steps in the game were researching (as preferred by most others) BW, Wheel and AH. Meanwhile I stole a worker from Gandhi. He immediatly started mining the hills of Beijing (founded direcly on the starting spot). As I saw the stone in the city radius, I decided to build the pyramids definitely. Beijing first built another warrior then a settler who colonized the precious southern regions (in between cow and horse, as a production center). Then Beijing build barracks and after that a few axes. Shanghais main purpose in the beginning was also to recruit as much axes and chariots as possible. Gandhi was the first target to train my brave soldiers. It was surprisingly easy to conquer Dehli, the buddhist holy city. He never sent any units into chinese territory... His second city, further away to the east was not interesting for me so I decided to make peace with him. In the meantime the Chinese people had discovered the art of stone carving (masonry) and the wise governour of Beijing immediately started to let his people build the pyramids. Shanghai proofed to be a real good production site and delivered much units, that were sent to capture the newly arised barbarian cities in the southeast regions. I took two (one being the gem city and the other was southwest of Dehli with the bananas). In 970 b.c. I finished the pyramids and revolted to representation. I hired a few specialist, but it was not the big deal that I hoped for - my cities were to small and had not a big food surplus Anyway, the diplomatic situation of the game distracted me, since HC declared war on me - or was it me declaring war on him, I dont remember...

But I remember that I was not amused seeing him settling the nice doublegold-rice city, which I had intended to be a natural part of the Chinese empire. I captured it without any problems pushed forward to the next Incan city located north of Dehli and holding marble, sheep and dear. I could also conquer it but few turn later HC was able to liberate it. This should be the beginning of a long lasting and bloodsoaked war, the last mainly for HC, fortunately.

My research followed the usual alpha approach, but different from many others of you here I threw in pottery to build a few cottages as I saw that representation was not going to went very well (sorry for my poor grammar, I never learned it!) MC was then discovered by the Great Enginneer Heron. So I was able to trade the techs of alpha and MC around the AIs. I dont remember what I got for it (calendar was in) but I know that I was not able to convince them to give me currency. The war with HC was seesaw: He brought the units to recapture gold rice city, I defended succesfully with spears, axes and chariots, we had peace for 10 rounds then he declared again, this poor fool!

But things got really annoying as Genghis decided to help his buddhist friend HC. He approached from his peninsula with quite a impressive stack containing several keshiks, axes andswords. Fortunately I had observed the diplomatic situation for a whole while. The buddhist block (I stayed atheist except for a few turns, when I accepted HCs "offer" to convert) consisting of Gandhi, HC and Genghis hated me the whole time, so it was only a matter of time when Genghis would declare. In preparation of this I had 3 spears and one axe left in Beijing, Shanghai also had one spear and one axe, which could be at the front in 2-3 turns. Finally I was able to dismantle his stack, but only at the cost of pillaged land around Beijing, a few lost workers and worst thing a lost race to the GLib, which I tried to build in Shanghai. Instead I had to pop whip another spear to avoid the loss of that city.

So in summary my situation: War in the east and the west with two aggressive AI (which are luckily technological fools). Good relations to the eastern tech-AIs. Machines are discovered curtly before 500a.d. via the second GE and two turns of research. Now that I am at 500, I'm building military unit in every of my 6 cities, mostly Chokos and Cats. Also I switched to Police state, should have this done long before... And I think this is by far the better choice in this game with the pyramids. Running PS and slavery while conquering, which I will do now (first HC, then Genghis, then Lizzy, then JC). After that the empire needs to get in shape, which I will do with serfdom, caste and rep (or if I have money even with US). I hope this plan will convert itself into land, power and finally victory.

 

[Mighty Dwaarf]

As my ability at this game is somewhere stuck in the void between Monarch and Emperor I decided that was probably best to play a bit cagey in this one.
My initial Warrior move of 1SW discovered no more resources but showed that there was more land to the West. After lots of pondering of what was so good about the blue circle 2W I decided that whatever it was would be either in the unknown square NE,E or could be saved for future city. So settled on the spot. Was pleased to see my hunch of somthing 1NE,E come good, but would have prefered a good food resource instead of stone.
In the first dozen turns I found out how crowded this map was by meeting Genghis, Gandhi, HC and Liz, I tried to steal a worker off Genghis but he moved it away just before I got there, so had to build my own. Researched AH to improve cows and find horses and then BW to find bronze finished a settler and then moved out to find him a home. On his travels to find a nice spot came across a couple of Barb cities rich for the takings.



Settled Shanghai by horses on turn 72, and took Zhou (on coast SW) turn 84and Zapotec (Gold and rice) turn 91. The Oracle was completed on turn 86, I had given up any hope of getting this myself a while back and had decided I needed archery first to ward off anyone trying to pick off an easy city. I attempted to build Pyramids but shortly after it was completed elsewhere, the same happened with Parthenon and most frustatingly the G Library when only a couple of turns of it!! However the gold did come in useful.
I was second to Alphabet in turn 156 but onlt really had that to trade and most others wouldn't trade any of theirs . Eventually got some good techs in trade i.e IW, currency and construction.
I had a mini war with HC after he DoWed on Gandhi, as Gandhi asked so nicely and I had an mini army not doing anything and Tiwnanku was in the way a bit from me getting the clams and pigs and furs spot I took it out. This was in the days before cats so I left it at that and soon agreed a mutually acceptable peace. I settled Guangzhou in the aforementioned spot.
At 500AD I am staring to prepare for a big military push. I am 15 or so turns from CS and having built Hanging Gardens and nearly completed forge in Beijing am not far off both Choko's and Maces. Targets are to take main Mongolian cities (especially Karakorum for GP farm), and also relieve York from Liz for the gems and possible move through her little area (no puns please). After SGOTM4 I feel Gandhi deserves a kicking but he has nicely blocke off all the other nasty people from me so I wil leave him, for now.



Although what will probably happen is I'll either die or get a little scared and hold back.

 

[dfi]

First city in place, second straight down, 3rd right side of englands island in weird place. Attacked left to get the iron over there and was about to continue on to his #2 city and england attacked from below.

So shifted to england and took two cities.

500AD, no current war, lots of ticked civs. Falling too far behind in tech now and I doubt I will live too much longer unless some miracle happens.

 

[jesusin]

jesusin, contender. Goal, fastest Conquest.

This has been my worst start ever. I thought I could conquer the world in the BC. Why? I dont know, I didn't even play a test game! The plan was this: hammer rich cities, beeline to Construction, harass 3 or 4 civs with my axes till cats came online to finish the game. No use for the Philo trait then.

War SW, Settler NW-NE, I see the North pole, decide to settle some 10 or 20 tiles S, this is no place to found a civilization. In order to see more tiles my next move S is SW-SW, revealing the corn. That's better, settle S of the Stone on the third turn. I GH gave me hunting the next turn. I don't like so much luck around, why a GH so close?

Techs: BW(good, copper in capital radius in "only" 77 turns, too late)-AH-Wheel-Pottery (for Granary-powered whipping)-Wri-Maths-Constr.
Production: War-War-Setler-War-Barracks. (Where's the worker, you ask? Well, Gandhi was so kind to give me three of his).

After the first Gandhi worker steal I pondered about going away or staying around with the warrior. A forested-hill tile accross a river seemed good enough. It wasn't this was the first of a endless 90% lost battles. I ended up keeping a record: I lost 50% of my 90% fights till 1AD. Delhi had to be mine, of course, Elephants and Cats would won me the game.

Cities: second, S, horses+copper+cows, production powerhouse. Thisrd SE, rice, cow, 2 gold. None of my cities had fresh water.

My biggest mistake was this: I knew Gengis was closed in. I saw his worker going towards the horses between us. A single Cha was sent there, but got there 1 turn late due to an unexpected Gengis border expansion. I talk to him and he says I should fear his Charriots. Well, if he had metals he wouldn't be bragging about his soon to be available charriots, would he? I dow, walk on the horses and his Axes kill my Charriot and advance towards my capital. Argggggg. He was stronger than me. I was able to stop his advance. Then I prepared a stack to take Delhi. When I dow Gandhi once again, Eliz comes dowing from the S. I am at war against 3 aggresive AIs and I am dead last in the power graph. Oh, I forgot, Cesar asked me to help him agianst Hatty, he was the strongest so I agreed, it was 4 AI I was at war with.

Well, I didn't lose any city, I took Delhi and made peace with Gandhi and I had the time to hire 2 specialists for a GS which promptly discovered Alphabet.

Around 500BC I discovered Construction and connected Delhi ivories. Beelining is a meaningless word when all your research comes from the 8 palace coins, isn't it?

It's 1AD, I have 4 cities, Cats and Elephants available, I am doing a whole lotta 12bpt when -4gpt. I have 0 cottages, I am working 0 sea tiles. I have lost 27 units to kill 52, not even 2 to 1. I think I have lost the game. GOTM15, the Deity one I lost, was the one I learned the most from, so I'll keep on playing to learn new things. They don't know Feudalism yet, there's hope.

 

[Balbes]

GH gave me hunting the next turn. I don't like so much luck around, why a GH so close?

I, too, think the decision to place the hut there is questionable, or at least, not very well tested. After you're finished, try this with the Contender start:
Warrior SW, Settler NW-SW
Warrior SW, Settler settle, build Worker, research AH
Warrior SE-NE

 

[LowtherCastle]

That's funny. I settled East and didn't even realize there was a goody Hut W until Jesusin's post! Guess GK must have popped it.

 

[Mutineer]

There was hut? Never see it, but I did move in different location then anyone else.

 

[Diamondeye]

I only got 2 cities before HC and England had settlerrushed the vicinity, so I set up for war with Genghis - and lost. Last memory: An army of Keshik and axes rolling down my capitol. Duh.

 

[Lawrence]

Great Job. I only managed to cripple 3 civs at the time. And I only managed to play through 455 AD before it is July.

I had two goals with this game: fast domination and early Cho Ko Nuts (through Oracle -> Metal Casting -> Forge -> Great Engineer -> Machinery).

Settled 2E since I wanted a plains hills and I glanced tundra/bad terrain to the north. And I was rewarded with rice

Then I saw the gold hills and I chopped a settler. I settled SE of the southern gold to get access to the cow.

The third city was settled S-SW of the copper to stake some land in case the iron showed up there. And it turned out to be a nice early production city.

I got the Oracle 1300 BC and chose Metal Casting (pottery completed the same turn)

Then I researched alphabet and traded me a tech lead.

I assigned an engineer and I got a GE (with 20% chance)

The GE lightbulbed almost all of machinery.

Machinery was discovered on the same turn as the iron was connected.

Then I build cho-ko-nuts. Gengis was my first victim.

I shut down research after Code of Laws until I got positive cash-flow at 0% research.

I demanded gold from Elisabeth, then declared. That way, she won't have gold to upgrade her units.

At 500 AD I had captured the capitals of Gengis Kahn, Elisabeth, Huayna Capac and Julius Ceasar (in that order).

The Oracle was delayed since I was late with Pottery (when I saw the gold I decided to take animal husbandry before the Oracle). I completed both Pottery and Oracle the same turn, but I think I was lucky. The Great Engineer was also luck. I realised that I would not have time to build a forge anywhere else than in my capital, so I had to gamble a bit. Again, I was lucky.