GOTM 20 Final Spoiler

[ngraner42]

I surprised myself with a Diplo win. 1848 for 42640. Took out Roosevelt and Mansa (1 city left), but was hugely behind in tech. I had given up the game for lost and just hunkered down and researched. Eventually I realized I had an outside shot at Diplo and behind Mass Media. It looked like I would be running against Hatty which was bad since I had a -4, you declared war on our friend penalty with Gandhi. Used a GE on the UN leaving 2 turns, but Gandhi finished it the next turn. Still thinking I was running against Hatty, I revolted to Universal Suffrage . It didn't matter, my +8 and no negatives with Hatty did the trick.

I am clearly not up to Immortal level. I managed successful war expansion, but tanked the economy in the process. I will have to review how the good players did it.

 

[Vynd]

After 500 AD, the big question was whether I should try to win diplomatically or just go for the spaceship. I’ve never won a diplomatic victory in any game, so I was bit wary of that option. But with a large population and all of the other Civs in the game at least Pleased with me, I figured this was as good a chance as I’d ever have. So I aimed my research towards Mass Media. If it didn’t work out, I wouldn’t really have diverged much from my favorite path towards the spaceship anyway.

It took me a long time to finish researching Astronomy. I was getting nervous when I saw that it was the only tech I could research the other Civs didn’t already have. But when I discovered it in 800 AD and no one else had it yet, it paid off with trades for Civil Service, Philosophy, Engineering, Feudalism, Paper, Music, and Horseback Riding. This was the same turn that I finished the Hanging Gardens of Arbela. Pasargarde completed my National Epic a few turns later. I discovered Nationalism in 1000 AD and traded it for Printing Press and Guilds.

After that I pretty much went straight for Mass Media, trading techs along the way to keep up in other arenas. Gandhi stopped trading with me for awhile because he feared I was becoming too advanced. Other than that the most interesting thing to go on was a cultural clash around Washington. My GPP (disappointingly) produced several Great Artists, which I popped there in Great Works. And I built the Hermitage there as well. But even with all that I steadily lost territory to Gandhi, such that Washington ended up being a rather marginal city instead of the research center I’d hoped for.

By the time I was approaching Mass Media, Hatty had surpassed me to become number one in population. So she would be my opponent. Gandhi liked me more than her but not enough to vote for me. Mansa liked me a lot but liked Hatty even more. I started building the UN in Arbela, my production powerhouse, in 1545 AD. I hadn’t been able to get a Great Engineer so I had to build most of it the hard way. At around the same time I switched civics to Universal Suffrage and Free Market, hoping the shared favorite civics bonuses with Mansa and Gandhi would put me over the top. In case that didn’t work, I kept pushing hard to get space-related techs, build Laboratories, etc. I did save up a little money, though, and cash-rushed the UN to completion in 1665 AD.

My civics switch did the trick. By the time the voting started Gandhi was pleased with me (and trading techs again, incidentally). And Mansa had reached +15 with me, one or two better than his relations with Hatty. I won the Secretary-Generalship on the first vote, and when the second came around a few turns later I proposed and won a diplomatic victory in 1700 AD. With Gandhi and Mansa on my side I had about 66% of the vote.

My final score was 3,250 / 54,661

 

[LotusDagger]

Follwoing my first thread, I was running SE. My capital was a very decent production base, but not a good place for cottage. So I built the hero epic inside it. It supplied major bulk of my army. I used the Vassalage, which provides experience to units and offsets military support cost due to Pacifism. I stayed in Hereditary Rule once I traded that tech. And changed to Representation and Mercantilism at the end of game.

Using pacifism, totally 6 GS were born from Susa, Parsagadae and Madras. A GM was born in Djenne at the end of game. One GS built academy in Djenne and the other GS lightbulbed Philosophy, Education, Print Press, Astronomy and Chemistry. In this way, I was most of time on par with MM and Hatty, and a few tech down with Gandhi. My economy began a long phase of recovery. With more cottages mature, I was able to increase slider from 10% at 1AD to 40% at 1000AD.

I finally prepared a big enough stack for MM. It is my third time to knock at the door of Timbuktu. I have been there twice and really myself. This time it was still a very bloody bath and I finally conquered Timbuktu in 1000AD. I took two more cities and wiped out Mali in 1150AD. I then razed the two crappy cities of Roosevelt and kicked him out in 1210AD.

Gandhi was a tech monster. He found 6 religions and put cottage on almost every tile. At 920AD, I began the research towards liberalism. Although I had education on him at the beginning, Gandhi was first to liberalism in 1030AD. In 1290AD when I was ready to DOW, he was up Constitution, Banking and Divine Right. But he did not have an army and no superior military tech. He only has four cities and one one-tile fishing village and my power rating was twice that of him. My conquest of Bombay and Madras in BC time really slows down him.

After some final tech trading, I DOWed on him. It is a steam-roll and I wiped out India in 1420. The annoying one-tile island gave me a little bit trouble.

After conquering India, I noticed that I am slightly below domination limit. One choice is to capture a few cities of Hatshepsut, but the number of unit in my navy is zero. So I just finished the research of Astronomy (major beaker lightbulbed) and settled a city on the small island. Once the border of new city expanded, I won a domination victory in 1515AD with a score of 122760. I forgot to increase the cultural slider, which should have saved me two to three turns.

At the end, when Hatshepsut switched to Emancipation, I got 6 people demanding emancipation. The other city with 10+ citizens got 4 unhappy. I have to scatter my military all over the country serving as military police. I guess by killing Gandhi, all the unhappiness happened immediately once Hatshepsut switched to Emancipation. Also Hatty refused any technology trading. The economy is small deficiency at 50% slider.

I did not build any world wonder and the only national wonder I built is hero epic in the capital. I also didn't build NE, as I do not want to get a GA. I definitely learned that the combination of Vassalage, Pacifism and Caste System is very good. It is a powerful alternative for Bureaucracy, Slavery and Theocracy or Organized Religion.

 

[Fold]

This game has been a bit of a revelation for me, remarkably I managed to win and with my best score on Civ by a long way. I put my success down to 2 things that worked particularly well:

1. Whipping

I knew whipping was powerful, but I suppose the humanitarian in me has previously made me unwilling to do it too much. But at this level I knew I needed to try something quite radical to stand a chance.

At the start of the game I was whipping every other Immortal. I'd let my capital city build one until it had 1 turn to go, then whip it. The overflow resulting from this meant the next Immortal only took 1 turn. I'm not sure if this is the optimal whipping strategy but it seemed to work.

I could make on average a new Immortal every 2.5 turns from my capital alone using this strategy - more than enough to steamroll both Roosevelt and Ghandi by ~1600BC, leaving Mansa Musa hemmed in in the NW corner.

Later after capturing big cities from Mansa I would whip 2 military units immediately to keep the offensive going. It would cost around 5-6 population to do this but they were all "we yearn to join our motherland" unhappy faces anyway.


2. Specialist Economy

After my first Immortal rush got stone I built the Pyramids in my capital, switched to representation and caste system and was able to outpace Mansa in teching while running 0% science. This is the first time I've ever run a pure specialist economy - it kicks ass!

After wiping out Mansa Musa with hordes of elephants and catapults around 800AD, I was extremely close to the domination limit. Therefore, I began to pack out the continent to fit as much population in as possible, and took two cities that Hattie had settled there. To my frustration I was still around 2% off the land limit. I therefore prepared a huge invasion force of elephants, catapults and macemen, ferried them over in a fleet of gallies to Hattie's lands... and watched them all die horribly to her cannons and grenadiers. Hmmm, time for plan B.

I turned my entire empire towards teching for Astronomy ASAP, churned out around 10 caravels and sent them out hunting for more land. Meanwhile I reinforced my Hattie facing shore with as many units as possible. I found the small continent in the middle of the ocean a short while later, populated by a convenient barbarian town defended by only 5 warriors. In a fit of overkilliness 4 galleons packed with catapults and macemen and a single great artist set out as soon as I discovered Astronomy, taking the town a few turns later and culture bombing to take me confortably over the domination limit in 1665 for a final score of 89,012.


I get the feeling that as far as Immortal difficulty goes this was quite easy, and obviously having the adventurer bonuses significantly changes how the first ~40 turns are played, so my perspective is undoubtedly skewed. Next time I want to make a concerted effort to finish the game quicker - I played far too many turns between finishing off Mansa Musa and actually winning, and in retrospect it should have been obvious that my attack on the Egyptians would fail. If I'd raced for Astronomy immediately instead the score would have been much better.

 

[Hescumet]

Contender, Diplo win in 1848, little points (lowest on power graph).

I didn't use slavery (even declaring war I dont like, but couldnt win the game without one). Why isn't the fact that slavery is so powerfull fixed in a patch? I also didn't chop forests unless I couldn't avoid avoid it to built the UN first. I like forests .

This was my first GOTM game and the second Civ4 game after ages (played it a few weeks after release and then didnt have time anymore). A big thanks to the organizers, was great fun! Some random observations:

* Is it true that this land-form setup is easier than continents? It seemed to me like there were loads of ressources making the game easier.

* I enjoyed reading the summaries of everyone else's games a lot, but why do you all use abbriviations like "RNG, GA ...." I dont understand them . Maybe the forum admins could install a tooltip that explains those shortcuts when you hover over them .

* Someone said "And Mansa had reached +15 with me, one or two better than his relations with Hatty." How did he know the relation between Mansa and Hatty? I think they are knowhere shown in the game?

* Someone said "get the feeling that as far as Emperor difficulty goes this was quite easy". Wasn't this Immortal?

* Anyway I agree, the starting position was really very good.

* One of the things that really went wrong in my game was that I attacked the US because I needed the happy-ressources. Then Washington (capital, in the North-West of the US empire) and another small city was left. I could have made peace then, but I thought if I take out washington the US would give me the technologies I was behind on against everyone. Now even when the US had 1 undefendet city left they didnt give me any techs for peace ... how is that?! From the postings I read by others this is supposed to happen !

* Of course I lost Washington culturally from India. As in the random game I played before I keep underestimating the cultural influence of far away cities. A strong cultural city can take away squares beside your medium-culture city even when it is 4-5 squares away !! Another point for some game-balancing? I guess I'll just have to adjust strategy to that...

* One thing that suprised me that no one mentioned how urgent it was to go for calender fast. Why? Because of the world settings there were loads of ressources requiring the calender, many of them happy-ressources and with the +3 health bonus it was clear happyness would be in the early game the city-size limiting factor. --- Maybe this is not important for people playing the boring slavery strategy ...

 

[Fold]

* Someone said "get the feeling that as far as Emperor difficulty goes this was quite easy". Wasn't this Immortal?

* Anyway I agree, the starting position was really very good.

That was me, and you're right. I have edited my post.
I also thought it was relatively easy due to the fact that a domination was so emminently achievable on this map, because you only needed to find a little bit of extra land beyond the starting continent to pass the limit, and because it was relatively easy to steamroll the continent with Immortals.

 

[Harbourboy]

Easy? You call that easy? Mansa Musa was a zillion techs ahead of me for almost the whole game.

 

[oncable]

I think you are right about this particular game. In many ways this was easier than a "regular" immortal game, mainly because there were so many resources readily available. In most games it is pretty well essential that you trade either resources or techs but not in this one. I found the most difficult thing was to keep the economy from tanking completely due to expansion. I had to raze many Indian cities simply because it would have killed the economy to keep them. Of course the AI built cities again so I had to go back and take the same areas again later, but that was ok. I had to pillage absolutely every Indian square in order to keep up tech research.
Overall, though, I enjoyed it a lot. I thought it was well planned out and a lot of fun to play.

 

[Thrallia]

* I enjoyed reading the summaries of everyone else's games a lot, but why do you all use abbriviations like "RNG, GA ...." I dont understand them . Maybe the forum admins could install a tooltip that explains those shortcuts when you hover over them .

* Someone said "And Mansa had reached +15 with me, one or two better than his relations with Hatty." How did he know the relation between Mansa and Hatty? I think they are knowhere shown in the game?

There's a forum page somewhere describing all the abbreviations commonly used for things in Civ4, but RNG and GA stand for Random Number Generator and Great Artist, respectively.

There are two ways to find out how an AI feels for another AI:
1) Go to the regular relations screen, select one AI(in this case, Hatty) and hover over Mansa's image, and count up the pluses and minuses that show up.

2) Using the HOF mod Foreign Advisor, go to the glance page, and it shows the attitude of every single AI toward every other player in a simple matrix.

 

[Fold]

Easy? You call that easy? Mansa Musa was a zillion techs ahead of me for almost the whole game.

Not easy. Relatively easy, as in compared to other immortal difficulty games

As for Musa I stole workers from him very early with the starting warrior, and pillaged some improvements around his capital while capturing Washington, thus limiting his early growth and restricting him to 4 cities. So he was only one or two techs ahead, not enough to resist a horde of elephants and catapults later made by my much larger empire.

 

[Tosti11]

Adventurer Class Domination win in 1964 for 29k

my first ever game on Immortal. first win above monarch. After 500 AD i attacked Ghandi with maces, cats, war elephants against his cavalry and grens. I was way behind in techs, but had just built up infrastructure and added two cities with lots of food that would grow quickly. I managed to take all of Ghandi's cities on the upper continent. I lost the first one back do to not leaving enough defenders, but managed to retake it pretty quickly. He built Lahore one SW of the bananas down by Hatty, and settled the big island completely.

I teched to get transports and destroyers, watching Hatty build spaceship parts. i realised the ghandi island would push me over the domination land limit, but i was not even close in population. War Weariness kept my cities lower in pop. I rolled the dice and instead of attempting to invade a far more advanced hatty i took the trip to the island and defeated ghandi. Hatty needed two spaceship parts to launch in about 1950. I huslted my troops back to the my mainland using hatty's territory via an open borders to speed the process. I built over a dozen artillery and eight or so infantry, in addition to my stack returning from ghandi's island. the turn after my ghandi raiding party returned i dowed hatty and landed about thirty five units next to lahore, between lahore and insert name of egyptian city here, maybe alexandria. they were separated by two tiles. i fought off about six artillery, luckily leaving my artillery with 15 of 18 strength. i suicided five or six artillery (destroyers took down the defense bonus in the two turns of the war) actually defeating a mech infantry at sub two percent chance and took lahore with infantry. I got tanks, but didn't end up using them much.

Moved next to alexandria. i had a few units in lahore, a few where i landed and one infantry due west of the landing party that killed an artillery. about four of five artillery and mechs attacked my landing party and lone infantry, leaving my attacking stack alone. i couldn't believe it. I took alexandria the next turn. one interesting thing was that the domination pop limit went up to over 70%, then down to 64% (which after taking alexandria i was at 63.45%). I thought i was going to have to take another city which would have been tough, but after one turn the dom limit dropped to 61% and I won (hatty finished her second to last part this turn, so i barely won).

I had built enough destroyers to fight off their navy some, but they managed to land three transports worth of units next to my most heavily defended city. I had three artilleries, some machineguns and some infantry. they didn't do much attacking until the last turn of the game just pillaged. bombers only pillaged or attacked ships, poor use of them since i didn't make a single sam infanty.

I was lucky to win, but i will take it. now i know i can play at this level. i guess no more adventurer class for me.

GOTM 18 was first monarch, 19 first emperor, 20 first immortal. Looking forward to 21. I am very impressed by some of the victory dates and scores. I have a long way to go, but the GOTM have really pushed my play from a long time prince level civ player (all other civ games) to a much improved CIV monarch player. Thanks to the GOTM staff for putting these on and to all other players for their comments.

 

[ungy]

Contender--Space in 1874.

Pretty disappointing game for me. I settled 1NW thinking I would play for a longer game--diplo or space. Built 2 more cities and started on immortals.

Mansa unfortunately settled on a hill by the copper and got spears out early.
I just keep building immortals but this is not an early rush. Turns into a bit of a downward spiral--I need more immortals so I wait and MM builds more units while I fall further and further behind in tech.

1st war with MM I just take 2 cities, then with cats finish him off. Turn to Roos and take him out but India is starting to run away with it. If I'm remembering it right I was just getting CS when Ganhi had rifles.

AI is bad at space so I think this will be interesting as I'm hugely down in tech. I build very little military as I have good relations and the AI are passive.

I lose Wahington and another American city to culture flips despite having lots of units garrisoning. One city never flips but becomes an island.

Still the power of the demo beeline and cottage spam is huge and I outrace him by I think around 10-15 turns w/o sabotage.

 

[Mutineer]

About riffles win on attack.


Actially 5 win/3 looose is average expected result when Riffles attacking Greens.
Note, Greens have only offencive bonus to riffles, on defence they are just weeker.

 

[Mutineer]

Continuation, start:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5759488&postcount=74

Well, noteI took over most of Gandy empire with out building single courthouse.

for the most of the game I had 10-20% research in average.

About this time I self researched feodalism and revolted to Vassalage
(note, I never adopted burocracy). +2 expirience letting one to produce L2 trops is mach more impotant in wars then supper production city. I did build HE in capital, with all it's hills.
IN a mean time I now Grow my cities to resonable size, as now I have a lot of improved ties they could work and high happiness limit. With representation from piramids it make a good cities.

Some Maces joined Elephants/ cats mixture.

I got GP from my GL city(Masta build stonehenge there), so I LB Divine right. Masta got it befor me, but now I had contact with Hatty.

So, I traded it around and declared on Masta. Again, too all his mainland cities, leaving him 1 tie island and made peace for Education.

Used Galeys to ferret some trops, declared and took 2 Gandy cities. still short of Dom. SEt culture slider to max I could and took 1 Hatty city, putting me over dom limit.

 

[Conquistador 63]

First spoiler is here.

I'm quite surprised I was able to finish this game, the small map helped a lot. I had started it in early July, but played from 250BC to the end in three sessions, July29/30/31, submitting a few hours before deadline.

However, even a greater surprise was that I was able to actually win the game, and compared to other spoilers here, it looks like my result wasn't too bad. I think the advice I got from RobertTheBruce and Balbes to a comment with a screenshot I posted in the 1st spoiler thread was decisive to my success.

I was in 125AD, had finished Roos and while MM's cities were closer, he had more troops in them, so I decided to attack Gandhi instead. I had a good stack with many cats but it still lacked WE's for defense against Gandhi's HA's. Following RTB's advice, I waited another 10 turns to reinforce before attacking in 375AD.

Took and kept 2 cities (Pyramids in one of them), 10 turns of peace then war again until 1170AD. During this period I took and kept all his cities in the subcontinent. Unfortunately, getting peace from me was not enough to save Gandhi: Hattie had joined the dogpile a few turns earlier and took 2/3 cities he had in the westernmost peninsula, so he was dead the turn after I gave him peace. A nice side-effect was the diplo bonus I got from mutual military struggle from Hattie, which never worn off, IIRC.

After Gandhi was gone, MM and Hattie already had their rifles/gren running around, and RL clock was ticking fast, so I decided the fastest way to complete the game was to turn it into a "always peace" variant. I was also curious about the possibility of catching up in tech at this difficulty level. I had 2x land as my neighbours, would that help or hinder my progress?

Diplo was the obvious choice, as Hatty was #2 in pop and friendly with me - time to use the old UN giveaway trick.

Well, after a whole lot of infrastructure buildings, I reached Mass Media in 1595AD. Too bad I never got a GE, so I had to build UN the hard part - it took 11 turns for me to cash-buy it in Gao (1655AD). This was Mansa's city W of my capital which had culture flipped to me a while ago, and I think he rejoiced when I offered it back to him, and with a shining new skyscraper with a lot of flags in front of it - look closer and you can see it in the screenie.



End of story, diplo win in 1700AD for some 80k score, in my first victory at this difficulty level.

What I liked most, though, was to conclude that yes, if you attain a large enough land advantage, by knocking out a couple AI's, it is indeed possible to outtech the remaining AI even without ever attacking them - I never touched Hattie or MM. Of course, depends on map/civs/settings. I was skeptical about this possibility and was proven wrong. If I had the time, I'd try space race and I'm pretty sure I'd have launched ages before the AIs - I was already ahead in tech when I stopped researching for a while to cash-buy the UN.

Thanks to the admins for yet another fun game.

 

[Mîtiu Ioan]

Hi all !!

Incredible game !
I was able to finnish the game and win a cultural victory in year 1943 ( or it was 1944 ? I'm not remeber this exactely ) on the lowest level ( adventurer - no ? ).

I belive that I was somehow "at the edge" - because 2 AIs was already building alot of SS components and probably in 4-5 turns ( maximum ) one of it will launch the ship !

I played really badly this game - my GPP point and Great Persons aparition was splited between Great Prophets in my capital ( due to Oracle + Chitchn Itza generated points there ) and Great Artists in my costal city. For that reasons I miss few "Culture Bombs" which could bring me a faster victory.
My main accomplishment was that I played an almost completely peacefull game ( only one short defensive war against americans ) and this was possible due to early adoptation of Free Religion and a Defensive Pact signed with Hatty.

Another surprise - I received 4 or 5 techs gifted by AIs ( this never happen before ) !!

Anyway - a enjoyable game, even that ( without additional starting bonus ) a game on Imortal level is still beyond my skills ...

Regards all and thanks to GOTM staff !

 

[Vynd]

End of story, diplo win in 1700AD for some 80k score, in my first victory at this difficulty level.

Nice game, Conquistador. Your Diplo win came on the exact same turn as me, but with 30k more points.

 

[Conquistador 63]

@Vynd: I noticed that too. The lower score is a proof that your game was more of a true diplomatic effort than mine, which would qualify as a backdoor (or side-door) diplo win.

One thing that I still fail to understand is the dates/turns of the elections. Different UN completion dates can often lead to same election dates.

@Jesusin: re. #1. Change of religion by MM's request never faded, but didn't matter in my case. Maybe it is a random factor, similar to WFYABTA when AI can "forget" you got techs from trade?
#4: % required after killing Gandhi - it did rise to 62%, check my screenshot.

 

[Tosti11]

Why do the domination population limit and the diplo percent of votes needed for victory (which is also population based) change? What is the driver? The domination pop limit in my game went from 60% to 70% and back down to 61% with some different values in between.

 

[Thrallia]

diplo % doesn't change, it is nearly always 62%

As for the domination population %, it is based on how many civs are alive...the more civs, the lower the limit.