GOTM 22 Final Spoiler
- Thread starter ainwood
- Start date
vixafox
Warlord
- Joined
- May 13, 2006
- Messages
- 120
Didn't make it to the modern age. I retired in AD1679.
Kills were:
1 lion
1 panther
1 wolf
2 scouts
13 warrior
116 swordsmen
2 jaguar
59 axemen
14 macemen
5 samurai
52 spearmen
13 pikemen
2 musketmen
22 archers
15 longbows
62 crossbowmen
6 cho-ko-nu
112 chariot
156 horse archer
11 keshik
34 knight
106 war elephants
227 catapults
Really not that much fun.
Kills were:
1 lion
1 panther
1 wolf
2 scouts
13 warrior
116 swordsmen
2 jaguar
59 axemen
14 macemen
5 samurai
52 spearmen
13 pikemen
2 musketmen
22 archers
15 longbows
62 crossbowmen
6 cho-ko-nu
112 chariot
156 horse archer
11 keshik
34 knight
106 war elephants
227 catapults
Really not that much fun.
da_Vinci
Gypsy Prince
Given the number of us who were able to report our finished game in the first spoiler, this could be the shortest final spoiler thread in the history of the GOTM! 
dV
dV
spacemanmf
Stalwart
Good work vixafox.
Alas, I paid the price for my optimism in the first spoiler. It was all over in 580AD. Not much I could have done faced with 8 AIs after my butt. The appearance of War Elephants kinda swung it. Oh and a hell of a lot more units besides. There was nothing really that I could have done. They were relentless!
Hmm, two Conquest defeat submissions on the trot - not good. At least I am not alone in this, however. Roll on something easier for WOTM 13!
Alas, I paid the price for my optimism in the first spoiler. It was all over in 580AD. Not much I could have done faced with 8 AIs after my butt. The appearance of War Elephants kinda swung it. Oh and a hell of a lot more units besides. There was nothing really that I could have done. They were relentless!
Hmm, two Conquest defeat submissions on the trot - not good. At least I am not alone in this, however. Roll on something easier for WOTM 13!
Retired in 800 AD. Could have held on for a few more years, but the righting was on the wall once cats and pachs started showing up, and I simply got fed up wathcing about 10 battles a turn while not being able to do anything other then hitting enter and issuing promotions.
1496 AD conquest win - base score: 1138; final score: 21806 With Adventurer bonuses
Recap from before 500 AD:
Built 3 cities, wiped out Qin and Monty (kept 2 each of their cities), then wiped out Khan. Had sufficient units to hit both Liz and Biz. Liz cut back to just London (kept alive to prevent it from being a barb breeding ground) and I was transporting praets to Berlin.
Berlin fell in 575 AD. I was attacking the area where Izzy, Biz and Louie overlapped, so while I was keying in on Biz, I had to raze the occasional Spanish or French city. I finally got Biz down to one city around 800 AD but didnt know where it was (at least I thought Biz was down to one city - an annoying feature of AW is you cant talk to the AI to see how many cities the AI has left - any way of determining the number of cities the AI has left under AW?).
At this point I had waves of swords, axes, chariots (and eventually cats and horse archers) from Izzy, Toku and Louie attacking towards my former Chinese cities - they provided a good buffer for my precious iron city. I never did lose either city since the AI doesnt know how to coordinate attacks very well. To repel these attacks, though, I did need to make more axes and spearmen, cutting back on my praet production.
Because of the distance of the target cities from my production cities I started to have supply problems - even with the road it was a long march to Izzys power center (which kind of looked like the Iberian peninsula BTW). I started to get impatient and attacked with less than 50% excess of units. In the end this made the game longer, I think, since I occasionally really needed that one or two extra praets to finish off a city, and instead, the surviving defender(s) gets extremely strong from promotions.
Anyway, I started keying in on Louie who was next closest to the former Chinese cities. Once I finally got around to building a really, really big army of praets I finally turned the tide. Louie fell in 1316 AD. His last city revealed the final Biz city tucked behind it and Biz was toast in 1322 AD.
Now I was left with the Japanese in the extreme Northwest and Spanish in the Southwest. Japan fell in 1400 AD and Izzy finally bit the dust in 1496 AD for the conquest win - base score: 1138; final score: 21806
A big stack o praets is whole lotta fun!
One thing that made this game easier for me (besides the Adventurer bonuses) is that with AW there is no question of what to do next. You never have to decide if you want to make peace since its not an option. You never have to wonder what an opponent is going to do - they will attack you always. No diplomacy decisions and not many tech tree decisions (- get Road, Archery, IW plus a couple of other techs and fight fight fight). I was happy I didnt beeline to IW - getting archery first was important to stem off the early attacks while finding a suitable iron site! The Praets are expensive so you need to have your production established before getting a lot of them. I also whipped and chopped quite a bit to build the early army to get established. Once established the win was fairly straightforward - except after about 1000 AD when the distance to target cities made me impatient and attack with less than absolutely certain odds.
Since then, I've replay on Contender - really, really hard - the archer and worker make this game easily winable - without them you have a tough time getting established.
Recap from before 500 AD:
Built 3 cities, wiped out Qin and Monty (kept 2 each of their cities), then wiped out Khan. Had sufficient units to hit both Liz and Biz. Liz cut back to just London (kept alive to prevent it from being a barb breeding ground) and I was transporting praets to Berlin.
Berlin fell in 575 AD. I was attacking the area where Izzy, Biz and Louie overlapped, so while I was keying in on Biz, I had to raze the occasional Spanish or French city. I finally got Biz down to one city around 800 AD but didnt know where it was (at least I thought Biz was down to one city - an annoying feature of AW is you cant talk to the AI to see how many cities the AI has left - any way of determining the number of cities the AI has left under AW?).
At this point I had waves of swords, axes, chariots (and eventually cats and horse archers) from Izzy, Toku and Louie attacking towards my former Chinese cities - they provided a good buffer for my precious iron city. I never did lose either city since the AI doesnt know how to coordinate attacks very well. To repel these attacks, though, I did need to make more axes and spearmen, cutting back on my praet production.
Because of the distance of the target cities from my production cities I started to have supply problems - even with the road it was a long march to Izzys power center (which kind of looked like the Iberian peninsula BTW). I started to get impatient and attacked with less than 50% excess of units. In the end this made the game longer, I think, since I occasionally really needed that one or two extra praets to finish off a city, and instead, the surviving defender(s) gets extremely strong from promotions.
Anyway, I started keying in on Louie who was next closest to the former Chinese cities. Once I finally got around to building a really, really big army of praets I finally turned the tide. Louie fell in 1316 AD. His last city revealed the final Biz city tucked behind it and Biz was toast in 1322 AD.
Now I was left with the Japanese in the extreme Northwest and Spanish in the Southwest. Japan fell in 1400 AD and Izzy finally bit the dust in 1496 AD for the conquest win - base score: 1138; final score: 21806
A big stack o praets is whole lotta fun!
One thing that made this game easier for me (besides the Adventurer bonuses) is that with AW there is no question of what to do next. You never have to decide if you want to make peace since its not an option. You never have to wonder what an opponent is going to do - they will attack you always. No diplomacy decisions and not many tech tree decisions (- get Road, Archery, IW plus a couple of other techs and fight fight fight). I was happy I didnt beeline to IW - getting archery first was important to stem off the early attacks while finding a suitable iron site! The Praets are expensive so you need to have your production established before getting a lot of them. I also whipped and chopped quite a bit to build the early army to get established. Once established the win was fairly straightforward - except after about 1000 AD when the distance to target cities made me impatient and attack with less than absolutely certain odds.
Since then, I've replay on Contender - really, really hard - the archer and worker make this game easily winable - without them you have a tough time getting established.
Lawrence
Warlord
Conquest defeat, 1466AD.
I should have won this game, I was very confident when I set my first save at 490BC, when I already reduced the English to 1 tundra city, however two careless mistakes, all before 500AD, costed me this one.
First: Leaving 4 workers working on a quarry and didn't notice that an Aztec HA can kill them, losing more than half of my work force at a single turn.
Second: A Chariot on sight, looking to pillage my copper. I got my spear to the copper, but left the city Antium with only a single archer in defense and didn't notice that the Chariot could attack the city. He won on a very very low odd (<5% for sure, archer has at least +70% (city garrison 1), +25% fortification and +20% from city defense value) and razed Antium, my biggest military production city!
I was not in a position of winning after the destruction of Antium. The game is hard and winning depends on near-perfect controls. Such a hit in it is plainly devastating. However I still managed to reduce the Aztecs to 1 city while defending the attack waves from the "Confederation"
. If I have the time to build the lands up... Defense becomes too hard with enemy having catapults.
I would play the game again and write strategies on winning these always war, pangaea games. But now, I am too tired to do that...
Oh, the kills:
107 HA
86 Archers
71 Chariots
64 Swords
63 Axes
35 Warriors
31 Spearmen
27 Catapults
17 Longbows
13 War Elephants
among some wolfs, panthers, etc.
I should have won this game, I was very confident when I set my first save at 490BC, when I already reduced the English to 1 tundra city, however two careless mistakes, all before 500AD, costed me this one.
First: Leaving 4 workers working on a quarry and didn't notice that an Aztec HA can kill them, losing more than half of my work force at a single turn.
Second: A Chariot on sight, looking to pillage my copper. I got my spear to the copper, but left the city Antium with only a single archer in defense and didn't notice that the Chariot could attack the city. He won on a very very low odd (<5% for sure, archer has at least +70% (city garrison 1), +25% fortification and +20% from city defense value) and razed Antium, my biggest military production city!
I was not in a position of winning after the destruction of Antium. The game is hard and winning depends on near-perfect controls. Such a hit in it is plainly devastating. However I still managed to reduce the Aztecs to 1 city while defending the attack waves from the "Confederation"
. If I have the time to build the lands up... Defense becomes too hard with enemy having catapults.I would play the game again and write strategies on winning these always war, pangaea games. But now, I am too tired to do that...
Oh, the kills:
107 HA
86 Archers
71 Chariots
64 Swords
63 Axes
35 Warriors
31 Spearmen
27 Catapults
17 Longbows
13 War Elephants
among some wolfs, panthers, etc.
Jimmy Thunder
King
Domination victory in 1998AD, and I barely reached modern times too!
It was a constant cat-and-mouse where I would be defending heavily but always trying to make a few decisive hits on the AI territory. From my early spoiler I had 2 Chinese cities in the west, well these fell soon after 500AD and the baddies started knocking on my front door again.
War elephants were my bread-and-butter for border defense most of the game as they could kill the stupid mounted units that kept pouring in.
One funny fact, I built the Great Lighthouse in Tenochtitlan without the knowledge of sailing, I also managed to build the Hanging Gardens in that city, which let me get a few gpp's.
I "rushed" for feudalism (1530AD!) with a plan to retake a few western cities on hills in the centre of the continent and fill them up with CG LBows to try to release the pressure on my homelands again. It worked pretty well. I kept harrasing poorly guarded cities where I could, but mostly was concentrating on getting some research done before attacking in earnest. I was the first to get Grenadiers and I started cranking these out for my real offensive push. I backed these up with cannons as I was meeting gunpowder units in the enemy cities. I wanted to get a conquest victory to avenge all of those people who got an English archer in the first 20 turns.
In my first spoiler Qin and Monty got it early, and Liz was banished to the tundra wastelands fairly early on aswell.
So...
Slowly but surely... Khaan (~1850AD), Bismark(~1907AD), Isabella (~1930AD), Toku (~1960AD) and Louis (~1967AD). My hands and wrists were cramping up by the end of the game with all of those mundane troop movements Louis was actually the first I eliminated properly because all the others had 1 tile islands. I had delayed attacking these little islands as there was still about 15 or so galleys marauding around the shores so I had put-off building any ships. The game was finished really once the last continental city fell but I wanted to hold underneath the dom limit and get a few more techs and pop to boost my score. I was hovering very very close to the dom limit and a border pop put me to 60.15% land in 1998AD just as I was getting ready to kill the final one tile cities with galleons and ironclads.
One low point was having 4 catapults and 5 conquistador's land by galleon on my poorly defended eastern flank to capture Tenochtitlan, one of my cornerstone cities. It was my mistake of thinking that this was the furthest from any war position, I had been pretty good at seeing the galleys coming around the shoreline, but the galleons plopped in from the great fog of black beyond the coastline.
I suppose that episode was somewhat historically accurate though! (But did the real aztecs have grenades and elephants to repel them?)
A few final comments:
The tech pace was terrible, from my turn log I got agriculture in 1400AD, sailing in 1857AD, alphabet in 1877AD and polytheism in 1912AD! heh
Units killed : 1616 (293 catapults, 266 horse archers!!)
Units lost : 265
It was a constant cat-and-mouse where I would be defending heavily but always trying to make a few decisive hits on the AI territory. From my early spoiler I had 2 Chinese cities in the west, well these fell soon after 500AD and the baddies started knocking on my front door again.
War elephants were my bread-and-butter for border defense most of the game as they could kill the stupid mounted units that kept pouring in.
One funny fact, I built the Great Lighthouse in Tenochtitlan without the knowledge of sailing, I also managed to build the Hanging Gardens in that city, which let me get a few gpp's.
I "rushed" for feudalism (1530AD!) with a plan to retake a few western cities on hills in the centre of the continent and fill them up with CG LBows to try to release the pressure on my homelands again. It worked pretty well. I kept harrasing poorly guarded cities where I could, but mostly was concentrating on getting some research done before attacking in earnest. I was the first to get Grenadiers and I started cranking these out for my real offensive push. I backed these up with cannons as I was meeting gunpowder units in the enemy cities. I wanted to get a conquest victory to avenge all of those people who got an English archer in the first 20 turns.
In my first spoiler Qin and Monty got it early, and Liz was banished to the tundra wastelands fairly early on aswell.
So...
Slowly but surely... Khaan (~1850AD), Bismark(~1907AD), Isabella (~1930AD), Toku (~1960AD) and Louis (~1967AD). My hands and wrists were cramping up by the end of the game with all of those mundane troop movements
Louis was actually the first I eliminated properly because all the others had 1 tile islands. I had delayed attacking these little islands as there was still about 15 or so galleys marauding around the shores so I had put-off building any ships. The game was finished really once the last continental city fell but I wanted to hold underneath the dom limit and get a few more techs and pop to boost my score. I was hovering very very close to the dom limit and a border pop put me to 60.15% land in 1998AD just as I was getting ready to kill the final one tile cities with galleons and ironclads.One low point was having 4 catapults and 5 conquistador's land by galleon on my poorly defended eastern flank to capture Tenochtitlan, one of my cornerstone cities. It was my mistake of thinking that this was the furthest from any war position, I had been pretty good at seeing the galleys coming around the shoreline, but the galleons plopped in from the great fog of black beyond the coastline.
I suppose that episode was somewhat historically accurate though! (But did the real aztecs have grenades and elephants to repel them?)
A few final comments:
The tech pace was terrible, from my turn log I got agriculture in 1400AD, sailing in 1857AD, alphabet in 1877AD and polytheism in 1912AD! heh
Units killed : 1616 (293 catapults, 266 horse archers!!)
Units lost : 265
Htadus
A and L's dad
to the winners and those who survived to late game. This was a learning experiance not to be forgotten.By 500 AD I'd conquered England's best cities but lost one of my own, and it was becoming impossible to defend my improvements. So I knew I was going to lose. It was just a matter of time.
I settled in to just defend my cities as long as I could. Which turned out to be a pretty long time. It wasnt until my opponents started hitting me with significant numbers of Catapults and War Elephants that I lost any units whatsoever, although my improvements were by now long gone. Walls helped. After Rome finally fell in 1340 AD, however, the rest of my empire collapsed pretty quickly. London was lost in 1448 AD, and that was that.
I killed a whopping 159 Horse Archers, 91 Chariots, 63 Archers, 54 Swords, 51 Catapults, 43 War Elephants, 42 Axes, and a hundred or so assorted rable (3 Cho-Ko-Nus). Most of the credit goes to 25 Praetorians, with 45 Archers (I built lots in the end stages when I had no Iron) and 3 Axes getting most of the remaining kills.
If I were inclined to try again, Id maybe focus a little less on research early on and be bolder about sending teams of Archers out to pillage and distract. And I should have had a Settler, and maybe another Worker, ready to go as soon as I discovered Iron. Basically though I just think that this setup was really damn hard!
I settled in to just defend my cities as long as I could. Which turned out to be a pretty long time. It wasnt until my opponents started hitting me with significant numbers of Catapults and War Elephants that I lost any units whatsoever, although my improvements were by now long gone. Walls helped. After Rome finally fell in 1340 AD, however, the rest of my empire collapsed pretty quickly. London was lost in 1448 AD, and that was that.
I killed a whopping 159 Horse Archers, 91 Chariots, 63 Archers, 54 Swords, 51 Catapults, 43 War Elephants, 42 Axes, and a hundred or so assorted rable (3 Cho-Ko-Nus). Most of the credit goes to 25 Praetorians, with 45 Archers (I built lots in the end stages when I had no Iron) and 3 Axes getting most of the remaining kills.
If I were inclined to try again, Id maybe focus a little less on research early on and be bolder about sending teams of Archers out to pillage and distract. And I should have had a Settler, and maybe another Worker, ready to go as soon as I discovered Iron. Basically though I just think that this setup was really damn hard!
That's a very good idea. AW is quite similar to MP, isn't it? In MP it is quite usual to send pillaging archers.
I got conquered on AD 1156. This is the first GOTM I have completed and submited, played several before, but didn't submit any.
I was quite confident at around AD, having conquered 4 enemy cities, including the one with the iron. I had founded Antium north of Rome, in the Hill south of the lake. I had about 10 praetorians, with the same amount of axemen, and I thought "I may be able to pull this of".
But then the stacks started to appear attacking, they razed my western city, nw of Antium. I retreated to Antium, as it was quite easy to defend, had Praetorians coming about every turn, so it wasn't a problem, but then... it came the botch, I failed to protect my iron mine, I saw the enemy, but forgot to move a couple of praets to defend the mine, next turn they razed it, and then the victory hope disppeared. I was always to hold off for a while, tried to recapture the iron city, but was impossible, and every praetorian lost was a great loss.
Eventually, the IA managed to overrun Antium and Rome.
I was quite confident at around AD, having conquered 4 enemy cities, including the one with the iron. I had founded Antium north of Rome, in the Hill south of the lake. I had about 10 praetorians, with the same amount of axemen, and I thought "I may be able to pull this of".
But then the stacks started to appear attacking, they razed my western city, nw of Antium. I retreated to Antium, as it was quite easy to defend, had Praetorians coming about every turn, so it wasn't a problem, but then... it came the botch, I failed to protect my iron mine, I saw the enemy, but forgot to move a couple of praets to defend the mine, next turn they razed it, and then the victory hope disppeared. I was always to hold off for a while, tried to recapture the iron city, but was impossible, and every praetorian lost was a great loss.
Eventually, the IA managed to overrun Antium and Rome.
Tosti11
Monarch
I only made it about ten years longer than valrond. Conquest loss in 1166sih. This was a horribly painful game wth no chance of victory. My five axes, four spears and a fair number of archers lasted for over a thousand years behind the walls of Rome. But when catapults came on the scene and i was still 40 or so turns to Vassalage, all i could do was watch the game end. boo
da_Vinci
Gypsy Prince
Hmm ... like all learning experiences perhaps? If you do forget it, doesn't it cease to be a learning experience ... ?
dV
Died about 700AD. Settle SW and on the iron W but was not able to defend the road in between enough to make enough prats to make serious attacks. Did manage to take London for a short while in the end but that was a pure suidide move, could possible have survive a couple 100 years more if I had kept those prats in Rome.
All in all very boring that the GOTM, usually the only game I play due to RL, being over after about an hour unless you plays close to perfect.
Still, very good job of all of you that manage to make a game out of it!
All in all very boring that the GOTM, usually the only game I play due to RL, being over after about an hour unless you plays close to perfect.
Still, very good job of all of you that manage to make a game out of it!
Started late, so I thought I might not have time to finish this game...heh, silly me.
I moved 1 SW to get all the nice bonuses in my fat cross and get faster initial production. It was lovely to see that that was the only conceivable move that took the copper away from my first expansion.
I didn't beeline to IW, I diverted to Archery and AH then went for IW. By that point, I had met 5 of the AI and was being swamped by the raging barbs. I liked how they would spawn near the Chinese and English, then head directly toward Rome.
Anyway, I lost my first worker when a barb warrior killed the archer defending it, and I lost my second worker about 1300 years later when my two defending archers were killed by a french archer and 2 more barb archers while attempting to reconnect the copper to Rome. I never built anything other than archers, warriors, and workers. I gave up in 950BC when I reached the point of impossibility, surrounded by barbs, no way to reach the iron, and the chinese, french, aztecs, and english closing in from every angle the barbs weren't.
Unfortunately, I no longer have the time to play out an impossible situation in an attempt to recover or learn something from it. Also, since I don't agree with retiring just to not get conquered, I didn't submit my game...which leaves me with another month with no entries
I moved 1 SW to get all the nice bonuses in my fat cross and get faster initial production. It was lovely to see that that was the only conceivable move that took the copper away from my first expansion.
I didn't beeline to IW, I diverted to Archery and AH then went for IW. By that point, I had met 5 of the AI and was being swamped by the raging barbs. I liked how they would spawn near the Chinese and English, then head directly toward Rome.
Anyway, I lost my first worker when a barb warrior killed the archer defending it, and I lost my second worker about 1300 years later when my two defending archers were killed by a french archer and 2 more barb archers while attempting to reconnect the copper to Rome. I never built anything other than archers, warriors, and workers. I gave up in 950BC when I reached the point of impossibility, surrounded by barbs, no way to reach the iron, and the chinese, french, aztecs, and english closing in from every angle the barbs weren't.
Unfortunately, I no longer have the time to play out an impossible situation in an attempt to recover or learn something from it. Also, since I don't agree with retiring just to not get conquered, I didn't submit my game...which leaves me with another month with no entries
BLubmuz
HoF Quattromaster
I gave this game a try, sure to loose, those settings are definitely out of my style.
Settled on the silk, i don't like to loose a hill, and if i think that keeping my capital on hill is better for defense, well it's game over before the first move.
To make it short, i gave it up when i saw no less than 20 assorted units along my borders, i has only one city (never built a settler).
Strange that the barbs continued to go after Rome with all those nice cities around.
After BW, and with that nice ivory right outside my borders, instead IW i went for Math/construction.
I guess that those kind of games (AW, raging barbs, aggressive AI, and so on) discourage most players to play.
OK, there's BtS, but have you compared the submissions for the last games with the ones of a year ago?
The least you could have done was to put iron and gold in the fat cross.
Settled on the silk, i don't like to loose a hill, and if i think that keeping my capital on hill is better for defense, well it's game over before the first move.
To make it short, i gave it up when i saw no less than 20 assorted units along my borders, i has only one city (never built a settler).
Strange that the barbs continued to go after Rome with all those nice cities around.
After BW, and with that nice ivory right outside my borders, instead IW i went for Math/construction.
I guess that those kind of games (AW, raging barbs, aggressive AI, and so on) discourage most players to play.
OK, there's BtS, but have you compared the submissions for the last games with the ones of a year ago?
The least you could have done was to put iron and gold in the fat cross.
alexxx
Chieftain
Ok, it's not everybody, but many.
Isn't it the meaning of the GOTM to try different settings, different gameplays, different levels?
Especially the exotic settings, like AW, always make me learn a lot, that I wouldn't have learned, otherwise.
No, I don't want to indoctrinate anyone, to see this like I do, (especially as I do not submit my games, cause I cant stop myself of reloading... but I want to say THANK YOU to the team of this site, for providing us Civ-Players with lots of entertainment, for years, now.
Isn't it the meaning of the GOTM to try different settings, different gameplays, different levels?
Especially the exotic settings, like AW, always make me learn a lot, that I wouldn't have learned, otherwise.
No, I don't want to indoctrinate anyone, to see this like I do, (especially as I do not submit my games, cause I cant stop myself of reloading...
but I want to say THANK YOU to the team of this site, for providing us Civ-Players with lots of entertainment, for years, now.
BLubmuz
HoF Quattromaster
A big thank you to the staff goes without saying.
Still, I'm usual to some complaints, trying to have more enjoyable games at the expenses of less learning perhaps.
But i see my comments fall in the void, still i'll continue to complain when it's (IMHO) the case.
Still, I'm usual to some complaints, trying to have more enjoyable games at the expenses of less learning perhaps.
But i see my comments fall in the void, still i'll continue to complain when it's (IMHO) the case.
I learned that I will not play this type of game with these type of settings...I learned that this exercise was not really very fun...I learned that I will choose which GOTM's I participate in MUCH more carefully in the future...This one was over so quickly for most people I have a tough time seeing where there would be too much learning going on in this one. Nice try...Better luck next time, staff.
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