GOTM 20 - first spoiler (500 AD)

[samois98]

Medium level (whatever that's called...it's my first GOTM).

Settled 1N...first city on to the NE by the horsies and then immortal rush. Unlike many other folks here, MM never came down my alley, New York by the dye and spices seemed to cut him off. Another major difference in my approach was delaying building the third city down by the sheep. If figured that since all the resources were health down there, and my maintenance costs were pretty grim, it wasn't worth the early investment to build the second settler. After all, when 4 immortals can take one town and live to tell the tale, why build a settler?

I took all of the Americans pretty easily (needed a few swordsmen to cut through washington's 40% d-bonus), but was not as smart as some other folk here and didn't leave the Americans a city so that they would be my weak trading buddies...

Gandhi clearly had me in a huge tech lead...swarms of elbows running around before 500BC. I razed a Mali town built south of Washington, but since then my economy has gone down the tubes big time. Scientists in the capital are the only thing keeping me afloat. I'm running hinduism, but I should be converting to Gandhi's buddhism shortly to cozy up to him...thanks for the tips.

I actually hadn't encountered the Egyptians. Never built a vessel, besides the workboats for #3 in the southeast.

Right now I'm just building improvements and bolstering my economy, but I'd better get a move on before I get tech rocked by Gandhi.

Thanks all for a nice, challenging introduction to GOTM!

 

[Adama]

@Thrallia

Thanks and very good advice {and especially info re: WOTM which I did not know}.

 

[Lehm]

My advice for others, if you aren't slaving practically nonstop, then you aren't doing as well as you can. Not much else really matters by comparison. For rolling armies, take the extra turn to bombard to 0% and attack nothing without softening em with a couple sacrificial cats. Trick is to make sure you have enough cats there. Every 2nd unit you make should be a cat. 50% of my entire forces are usually comprised of cats. 80% in multiplayer. Removing withdraw from Cats in BTS is another positive step for reinvigorating this game.

IMO.

Mh, good to know. Actually, I never adopt slavery. I thought when you are sacrifcing people to accelerate your production you can´t do this a long time because either you won´t have the population for doing it or the city is in total revolution due to "We can´t forget what you blabla.."

So how often do you sacrifice people and at which sizes of your cities? Actually I thought I am not doing bad but you finished 900 years earlier than I did. So there is still a lot to improve for me...

 

[da_Vinci]

Fast game for me, took no notes and have already forgotton all the minor details. I settled 1 NW, settled 2 cities only all game going straight for cats and delaying any action till then cept slaving lots of axes and some spears and immortals.

When the first cats were out, stormed over Roosevelt in no time and took west half of Mansu before ceasefiring to consolidate forces.

My advice for others, if you aren't slaving practically nonstop, then you aren't doing as well as you can. Not much else really matters by comparison.
IMO.

So you did not attack until you had cats ... no immortal rush. Is that to avoid outrunning your economy? Several reports here mention economic havoc after early expansion.

How do you conquer rapidly and afford to pay for it? Is waiting to start wars until you have a better economic base part of the answer?

And just how non-stop is your use of slavery to rush units? Do you wait for the unhappiness to clear before the next whip, or do you accumulate mulitple "we cannot forget your cruel oppression" unhappy faces?

dV

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Mh, good to know. Actually, I never adopt slavery. I thought when you are sacrifcing people to accelerate your production you can´t do this a long time because either you won´t have the population for doing it or the city is in total revolution due to "We can´t forget what you blabla.."

So how often do you sacrifice people and at which sizes of your cities? Actually I thought I am not doing bad but you finished 900 years earlier than I did. So there is still a lot to improve for me...

No precise rules, however one of the points is that you poprush at a point when poprushing will consume at least two citizens. Your city loses that many citizens (= at least -2 unhappy, but only gets +1 unhappy for the poprush, so poprushing doesn't injure your happiness. Then don't poprush again until the unhappiness from the previous one has gone away. If I'm in mass-poprushing mode, I'll probably do it to a city as soon as the city is big enough to support the poprush (unless there's some specific tile like gold that I want to work that requires a bigger city to support it). The smaller the population is, the less food it needs to grow back after poprushing.

 

[samois98]

I may have the numbers a bit wrong here, so correct me, please, but I think this is how it works out.

Let's assume a size 6 city.

My understanding is that: Poprushing once reduces the population to 5 and adds one unhappy for 10 turns.

rebuilding from size 5 to 6 takes about 30 food (20 plus 2 per citizen).

Thus, if you are running 3 surplus food per turn, you would end up back where you started again in 10ish turns. Now of course you don't get to grow to 7 or allocate citizens to specialties, so that's the main tradeoff in my mind.

Just my take...if someone wants to do a bit more of a rigorous analysis, that would be much appreciated.

 

[Markus5]

Pop-rushing consumes a different amount of citizens depending upon how much of the build remains. It may be that pop-rushing a library will take 5 citizens when the build starts. After some turns, it may take 3 citizens. You need to make a judgment as to how many citizens are sacrificed to finish that library. You should sacrifice at least 2. 3 is usually better. After the sacrifice, your population is reduced by, say, 3 and your unhappiness is reduced by 3 because of that. Your unhappiness is increased by 1 for the sacrifice, so whipping your citizens to death to complete the library has made them happier.

 

[Adama]

A couple of things I consider in addition to what excellent information is listed above about pop-rushing under Slavery with whipping:

1. What tiles are available in my fat cross that I am giving up? If I reduce my pop by 2, and I give up working two plains tiles, no big deal. But, if I have to give up working a good resource tile, maybe I'll actually let that particular city grow until it either
a. reaches its max limitation with current happiness/health
b. will have to work less useful tiles

2. Am I at or near the point of changing from the Slavery civic? Sometimes I will go through each city at that point and slave away some pop, knowing it is the last chance to do so.

3. Occassionally, when you take over a city, you are able to "slave away" some of the unhappy pop that would have been lost to starvation, anyway.

4. In certain situations, I may already have an unhappy angry citizen not working and consuming food nevertheless. Let's say I am working on a happy building, such as a colisseum and can finish it will a whip of 2 pop. Then, I can achieve what I want by elimination of the angry, and adding a happy from the colisseum, and also happies from having eliminated two population in general. I only add the one unhappy from whipping.

5. Finally, I don't mind letting the unhappies from slavery mount to astronomical levels (even as high as say 100 turns on some occasions) especially if I know I'll be switching from slavery soon. Then I kind of "enjoy" knowing that every fifteen turns I can grow one more because once every fifteen turns one of those unhappys will go away, with no action on my part, that were due to earlier whipping.

I am still a noob, but I thought these ideas might get your own creative juices flowing about how to make better use of slavery civic and whipping/pop rushes. It is - very, very useful -- with the obvious and final caveat that I rarely whip in cities that have near equal food balance and almost always slave away in cities with large food resources. This is because of the above reasons: the city will reach its max happiness limit population anyway too soon, it is easy to regrow the pop with extra food resources, and it may be the "only" way to produce needed infrastructure in a city such as an intended GPP with plenty of food but almost no hammer production. Slavery basically converts food into hammers at a very reasonable rate.

Hope that helps someone.
Adama

 

[jesusin]

Hey, Adama, that's not a noob post at all!

I just wanted to add that the rate you convert food into hammers is doubled when you have a Granary. I almost always whip my granaries.

 

[sebtanic]

Those are some very good tips regarding slavery. I think I will start this game over again tonight and try if I get some further wielding the whip... I've been able to own America on my second try but when I tried to attack either Mansa or Gandhi afterwards I was hopelessly outteched. Let's see if slavery does it for me!

Of course I'm not submitting these games, just replaying to try and learn how to survive at Immortal level.

 

[krisk]

I just picked up Civ 4 again after a very long hiatus (I'm trying to finish grad school -- it's already probably taken a year longer than it should have because of Civ!).

This GOTM kicked my butt. I managed to take out MM and Roosevelt, but Ghandi has really run away with things, and I am certain there will be no catching him.

I was comfortable playing Civ 3 on Diety, but not nearly so with Civ 4.
I think my biggest problem is figuring out how fast I can expand. I'd like to try to do more early domination/conquest, but it doesn't seem possible to keep cities or to fill in empty spaces in Civ 3 style because of the maintenance issues. I've learned of a 60% rule from the War Academy for early expansion, but that doesn't seem applicable when you're talking about domination victories.

Can anybody help with me this or point to a good thread?

 

[Thrallia]

I may try this game again, if given the time, and I'll try to take on Gandhi after Roosevelt, rather than going after Mansa.

 

[alexxx]

Well guys. Hello to all, as I have not posted here for a long time. I played some of the civ2 GOTMs, and I am still, and maybe will be forever, fascinated by the depth, complexity and fun of the civ-series.

I tried this game of the month (not officially), and I will not spoil anything.

Just wanted to say that I restarted this game a few times, to try some of the excellent strategies presented here. And, I want to tell you, that the AI is playing different, nearly each time. (One time Mansa got the Copper early, one time Washinton got iron, befor I could approach him).

To get the immortal-rush going it is absolutely necessary to settle on one of the hills. If you wont do that, at least I was much too slow to wipe out two of the enemies on the same island before they got spearmen, etc...

But one big question: The remaining AI(Egypt) is so far ahead in science, that there was no chance of ever attacking them. (Except you do it like AU_Armageddon did, and encounter them early enough). Even in other games I played, there is always one AI that does reasearch sometime 3techs in one turn. Unbelieveable! How can they do? So if you can't wipe out all your enemies in the early stages of the game, how can you compete in the technology race?

Thanks for any advice, have a nice day!

 

[Kennigit]

First gotm for me after giving wotm 10 a whack. Settled in place, teched mining and then bw, built worker 1rst and farmed corn, mined plain hill, then chopped. Mansa got djenne 2n of gold in 3000 bc, so I went and built 1se of copper [rosy had new york 2 sq. away w/ clam]. This city built barracks and 2 axes right of bat using copper mine while capital got 2 more settler. Third city got fish and horse while 4th city was 1e of sheep. Capital got immortal with hooked up horse and I went to war vs rosy. Easily took new york on 2nd turn of war w/ 2 cr axes and 1 immortal vs 2 unpromoted archers [odds around 60 percent IIRC]. Got washington later with help of 2 swords. Next turn declared war vs mansa with some extra swords and took djenne a little while later. Took his next city on way to capital, but didn't use spearmen so acouple horse archers retook it and simitaneosl snuck by to washington. I was first to construction and eventually took timbuktu in 250, getting the pyramids from the conquest. Ghandi was ahead of me in tech but gnp rapidly recovered and caught up/passed hatty. @ 500 ad i was just getting my cities growing using hereditary rule.

 

[Vynd]

I’ve only beaten Immortal difficulty once (GOTM10), so I didn’t go in with big dreams. I figured I’d probably try and use Persian Immortals to beat on one or two of my neighbors, hopefully carve out a good niche for myself, and then see where things led after that.

I settled on the hill due north of start, and researched AH, The Wheel, and Mining while building a Worker, Warrior, and Settler. I decided to put Pasargarde by the Horses but overlapping somewhat with Persepolis including part of the lake and the Rice (forgoing the Fish).

I briefly toyed with the idea of being peaceful early after all. I was pretty sure I could wall off enough territory for four or five good cities without fighting. But when the Americans settled in the jungle with all the Calendar resources at their disposal I decided that no, I should kill them and try to wall off the southeastern part of the continent for myself.

In 2280 BC I hooked up my Horses, just as Persepolis finished a Barracks. I also converted to Slavery around this point. I declared war on Roosevelt in 2080 BC to steal a Worker with my Warrior. With the help of the whip I had three Immortals going the next turn, and proceed to fight in earnest. Roosevelt had two cities besides the capital: New York with all the happiness resources and Boston south of New York, near Copper and Ivory (but with neither hooked up). I left a Warrior to watch Boston, and captured lightly defended New York in 1920 BC.

My army proceeded to Washington next, and captured it in 1760 BC. But I was left with only 4 Immortals, including the ones temporarily garrisoning my newly captured cities. So I had to slow down a bit. After scouting Gandhi a bit I decided that I didn’t want to get bogged down in another war. And so I contented myself with developing my cities while I finished researching Alphabet, in 1200 BC. I was then able to extort Mysticism, Fishing, Archery, and Masonry from Roosevelt in exchange for peace. I refrained from trading away Alphabet to Mansa or Gandhi and was rewarded a bit later when I was first to get Mathematics, opening up some “trade-with-one-then-the-other” deals.

Other than a brief interlude to scout Gandhi, I’d kept my borders closed to my neighbors, per my plan to keep them bottled up until I could settle the south. This worked out just about perfectly. I was hoping to array three cities along the south coast, including a replacement for Boston which I intended to raze. I had two Settlers ready to go when Mansa managed to sail a Galley with a Settler all the way around the far side of the continent. So I ended up settling one city south of Washington with Clams and lots of hills, and one in the powerhouse seafood, sheep and Iron location in the far southeast. Boston was attacked and kept, in 750 BC, eliminating Roosevelt.

I’d been toying with the idea of beelining to Construction and attacking Gandhi or Mansa with War Elephants and Catapults. But starting three new cities almost at the same time put a big drag on my economy, and I wasn’t sure I could put this strategy into practice fast enough. So I decided to concentrate on internal development and hopefully use my advantage in territory and cities to score a spaceship or diplomatic victory.

From here on out it was pretty much all about keeping up in technology. As expected, Gandhi and Mansa started to outpace me pretty much right after my big expansion. But I was careful in picking which techs to research and by concentrating on the most expensive tech at any given time I was usually able to get to it first and make some trades. I also lightbulbed some techs specifically so I could trade them. Another big help was that in 50 BC, I finally made contact with Hatty. She was a bit backward compared to the rest of us, at least initially, and made a good trading partner.

That’s about all there is to report through 500 AD. At that date I was in the midst of researching Astronomy, by far the most expensive tech available to me at the time, in hopes of trading to pick up lots of other techs. My initial cities were pretty well developed, and my new ones were starting to catch up. Arbela, with the seafood and Iron, was turning into an awesome production city, and my Horse, Rice, Banana city was shaping up as a Great Person site, focused on Great Scientists.

 

[Tosti11]

RL has really gotten in the way this month. I have played this in several sittings over the last two weeks and did not take any notes. i did not expect to last terribly long anyway on immortal and thought notes would not be necessary. As it turns out the adventurer bonuses were more helpful and plentiful than I anticipated.

I settled 1N on the plains hill for the additional production and set research to Ah to find horses, then BW for slavery and to find copper. built barracks settler. Met everyone but Hatty quickly with scouting, theres and mine. Sent settler north to grab horses. India's scout moves off of a tile, next turn I move next to where he just was, unprotected. In that one turn, in the only spot in the fog, a barb warrior appears and kills my settler. I thought that was it, all the lost prodcution and turns set back to rebuild a settler and hook up horses on immortal difficulty, i am sunk.

Despite the set back i did rebuild and hook up horses. Built immortals and quickly took down America keeping Washington and New York, razing Boston. They built a city up north, east of Dehli, but are never a threat again. Quick attack Mansa, keeping his ivory, copper, calendar resource city east of my capitol. then take out his other calendar resources city and raze it to cut down on maintenance costs.

Had to sign a PT, but i did get a tech from Mansa. I tried really hard to take timbuktu, but couldn't until axes and swords come. after ten turns i stole two workers from Mansa in the re-declare. A few turns later cats and elephants also arrive. I eliminate Mansa by 500 or so and set builds to courthouses and markets in all cities to rebuild economy. Sights set on India, growing cities and filling in the gaps in my land.

I cottage spammed my first two cities, chopped everything, and whipped when the whipping happiness penalty would disappear and/or when growth would cause unhappiness to fuel my war machine. ignored libs until I had timbuktu taken. built graneries, lighthouses, barracks, walls in newly taken over cities.

I think some of the infrastructure (lighthouses, walls) set me back in the warring. Also i didn't pillage mansa the first time around and that was a mistake.

Goal from here, take Ghandi to control island and go for either a domination or try to catch Hatty for a space win.

Question: Is the starting area enough for domination win, that is, how much below the mountain on that peninsula do we need plus all land above mountain to achieve domination? Has anyone done the tile count?

For first ever game on Immortal i am doing much better than i thought i would. The early warring went well. I am behind in tech, but i think i can out produce Ghandi and overrun him with units. More in final spoiler if I can get this game finished. It has been a struggle thus far to find time. RL is killing me!

 

[Erkon]

...
Question: Is the starting area enough for domination win, that is, how much below the mountain on that peninsula do we need plus all land above mountain to achieve domination? Has anyone done the tile count?
...

The starting area is not enough.

 

[Harbourboy]

I settled on the hill 1 tile north of the starting position and built 2nd city to get horses.

By 500 AD, I have eliminated Roosevelt via Immortal rush and made some inroads into Gandhi before he got longbows (oh so quickly at this level).

I'm middle of the pack at the moment, but Hatsepshut and Mansa Musa are teching away furiously so not sure what sort of window I have from here to attack them. It'd take a serious catapult spam to take a Mali city right now, and then I'd have to somehow deal with hordes of longbow pillagers, which would be a pain.

Not really hopeful of getting any sort of victory from here, but happy to still be in the game with at least some options ahead.

 

[Tesuji]

This is my first try at a GOTM ever, so I decided to start with the adventurer save. I didn't notice the HOF tabs in the options at first. Does the autolog keep track of every move made? Does this mean at the end we have the possibility of seeing how the experts played? That would be so cool.

Anyway, here's how I did until 1 AD. Settled in place after moving all other units first, including moving the worker to the hill E-SE, scout E-NE. Research AH to find the horses while I build a worker and then a settler (after growing to 2 by partly building barracks). By the time the settler was done I see America and Mansa Pusa pretty close and Ghandi a bit furter West and decide to settle the second city all North on the coast between the bananas and sugar. This seals access to horses for other players. I steal a worker from Mansa Pusa but he's very forgiving and asks to burry the hatchet just a few turns later. Third city is obviously just above the horses and I when I get a 4th settler I manage to get it in time to place it all West to give it Ivory, Gold, Bronze and Dye. The spot to the SE also looked very sweet, with the Fish, Clams and Sheep but I figured expanding outwards has higher priority. It looks like I really need the gold to keep any expansion going. Now Barbs have settled on the sweet spot SE. With four cities I start cranking out Immortals at high pace and take the city from the barbs while getting some experience for some units. By the time I take it it's size 2 and I get to keep it. My economy is hurting and I need to actively manage gold production to keep 20% research going. After a few more turns I send about a dozen immortals for America and destroy their first city as it's a lousy spot but I keep Washington. I make peace as soon as America lets me, crank out a few workers and start making cottages to keep my economy afloat while I struggle to get to Calendar. Mans Musa settles in between Washington, at a better spot. I take it and destroy one more city (NE of Washington) before declaring peace. My research has been going at 30% most of the time. It's 1 AD and I'll get Calendar next turn, which will give me access to six (!) new resource types. I have 7 cities, 9 workers, 2 Archers, 13 Immortals and 14 Swordsmen. I'm ranked just below Egypt but well below Ghandi. America is tiny now but Mansa Musa is still big enough to ecome dangerous later.

I think it's time for a little breather, developing the new resources and improving the economy to enable a higher research rate. But then I'll probably have to go for Ghandi's throat? He seems to get too far ahead but his Horse Archers don't look too scary just yet. I'll be able to make War Elephants soon, will that be enough? I'll probably keep a good size garrison of Immortals centrally in my capital to deal with any invasions from sea and start making lots of Catapults and War Elephants to try and overrun Ghandi. Washington seems strategically placed to launch a push from. I'm simply not confident that taking out Mansa Musa and competing with Egypt and India peacefully is going to cut it at this level.

I have a workboat exploring the coast-line, which has only just started to reveal Egypt. The blocked access to this part means some naval activity to come into play at some stage. I'm looking forward to hearing about how others deal with that.

Any comments or ideas where I could have done better would be highly appreciated.

 

[Tosti11]

Does this mean at the end we have the possibility of seeing how the experts played?

Yes, you can at least see the replays of the experts/everyone, i don't know if their logs are published somewhere or not.