GOTM 22 First Spoiler

[ainwood]

GOTM 22 First Spoiler: 0AD

Reading Requirements

1. You must have reached 0 AD (or had you game finish earlier )
2. You must have contact, and know the approximate locations of all other civs.

Posting Restrictions

1. Please do not post about anything that occured post 500 AD.

 

[xXMugenXx]

Well this was my first GOTM so I went with adventurer class and prepared to buckle down. I quickly sent my warrior east to explore and came into contact with Montezuma (He sent a scout from the west) and Elizabeth to the east. It was all good for the first couple of turns, then the barbarians come. I managed to chop rush a couple of axemen and razed two English cities while taking a third which was only to be taken off my hands by the Aztecs. It was also around this time I came to the sad realization that there was no iron around the starting area! But as I had noticed iron to the north of London, destroying Elizabeth ~700BC, I quickly conquered it to begin making Praets.

I have also managed to find three barb cities all to the south of me spamming axemen and the like. As well as noticing the Aztecs and China placing cities around Romes borders. It's looking quite bleak as Rome has to endure about 8 attacks a round with a new archer produced once every 8 turns.

I doubt I will be able to do much more than hold off the inevitable.

 

[wilkofromoz]

Started on contender.

Embarassingly I was conquered in about 30 turns because I chose to build a worker first and didn't get away with it. In my shock, forgot to grab the auto save so no submit for me on this one.

Out of interest I've replayed this GOTM twice. I made it past 500AD on both of those but not very far.

Hmmmm

 

[cabert]

I didn't reach 0 AD, sorry.
Ignominous defeat (well, I retired but I don't see how I could have lived more than a few turns) in 160 BC.

It started quite well :
I settled on the plains hill SW of the initial position, built a warrior then a worker to mine the gold, teched straight to IW while exploring around the starting area.
I found Iron, settled directly on it while roading between both cities.
I had researched mysticism after the wheel and waited for the second city to grow to size 2, while building an axe.
After mysticism, I went agri>hunting>AH for the pigs and cows.
My big mistake : not building more workers. My single worker couldn't keep up with the task.
I had thought I wouldn't get to improve my land, and this was wrong. True, I got pillaged quite often, but I still managed to defend my gold mine for most of the game. And certainly having 3 workers grouped to build a road in a single turn would have led to better results. .

So war preparations were done, I used the barbs to give my troops (praetorians of course) the needed XPs, then I razed 1 chinese city, took and kept 1 english city (horses and ivory), healed, took and kept another chinese city (gems, cows and gold ), saw that the chinese had built the pyramids, headed for their capital which was too heavily defended for my meager stack.
I pillaged all around it, including the copper to avoid facing more axes.
And I didn't see the massive french stack coming.
I had 1 CG archer + 2 praetorians defending the gem city, but that was not enough to face CR axes .
And I didn't see the stack going for Rome neither .
I just didn't have the troops to defend that many cities, second big mistake.
Both cities got razed, that's when I retired. I cannot see how I could save the situation with no troops left, no workers to rebuild the tiles pillaged, no settler to rebuild the cities lost...
If they had captured the cities instead of razed them, I would have tried to get them back.
But they razed them, meaning no more chance for me...
330 points. Smallest score ever for me

 

[jesusin]

...It was aound 4000BC when the Confederation, formed by the 8 sacred families, was surprised by the upheaval of a foolish guy, called jesusin. He must have been nuts to declare war to all 8 families at the same time, when his forces consisted on a single warrior and a few tramps. The rulers of the Confederation treated the problem lightly, there were more important matters to discuss at the time, so he was left alone for a while. He climbed to a plains hill were he founded his capital in 3960BC. He set his wise guys to research BW and his taskforce to produce another warrior, then half a barracks, then a worker when his population had doubled. IW being an expensive tech for him, he sent his worker to the gold first thing. As if his people didn't need to eat! So pigs and cows were left alone for a while. After discovering BW he revolted to slavery because he was equally cruel regarding his enemies and regarding his own people. Then researched Hunting and Archery, because he didn't summoned the courage to settle near the copper N or S of him. After finishing the barracks he produced 2Archers and a Settler, while he discovered IW next.

He was proud to discover IW in 2230BC, the fool. The goods punished him by inflicting him two 97% odds defeats, losing 1Arc and 1Warrior. Further research went Wheel-AH-Pott-Wri-Maths-Construction. The settler was sent to a pitiful desert location and settled on top of iron. With his reduced forces he was not cunning enough to protect his improvements, that were mercilessly pillaged. A second worker, a granary and some more archers were built. At 1000BC he had only 2 cities, connected by road, 3pop and 4 Archers. He didn't even had a sinlgle improvement on his resources. Poor guy.

Alas, the guy started to learn. He trained some incredible fighters called Prats, who used something called "active defense" to maintain his land free of enemies. His resources were improved and more Prats came out. The 3 first were sent to Karakorum, leaving his homeland almost defenceless, in his typical daring strategy.

In his pride, he thought that a good strategic idea would be to attack only great cities, in order to break the families one by one. He could have taken lots of small villages were he could have rushed some more units, but he despised all that and thought big, planning to take the whole world. The goods didn't like that, so his barely defended capital suffered a 95%odds defeat and some of his animals were pillaged. His fighters were good, though, and he took Karakorum, the capital of the richer empire at the time.

The rulers gathered quickly and decided to take actions against this arrogant guy. Louis sent most of the units, helped by some Genghis, Isabel and Toku forces. While the troops approached Karakorum, jesusin was so fool as to think that his strategy was good, since it had worked for him once. He didn't paid enough attention to the fact that his capital had suffered a lot while his units were away in crazy missions. So again, he sent his units North, leaving Karakorum almost empty. His magnificent armies took Shangai, with the Oracle in it and a mined gold nearby on their way North. What a good fighters for such a pitiful leader! He repeated the strategy again and travelled North towards the next richer nation, China.

His troops stopped abruptly their advance when they found an Axe in Beijin. They retired a bit to see if the Axe went away with a settler, but the rulers of the Confederation were very wise and they sent the settler with archers. The settler was ambushed and Beijin came under siege, losing its metals. All the while, the confedered army razed Karakorum (our great Swords stepping over his pitiful Axes as if they weren't there) and retook Shangai twice. Louis was allowed to keep the city as a reward for his efforts. jesusin's stack coming in help of Karakorum lost his objective so they took the useless city of Nanjing, where they were so demoralized that they lost some easy fights. In his stupidity he felt good about taking another city, when in fact all he was doing was dividing his forces in groups of 3-4 Prats. Had he kept his 13 Prats walking together from capital to capital, he could have had a chance.

He knew he was making a mistake again at 1AD when he sent his remaining units to the southern Genghis cities, but he was stubborn and arrogant, so he did it anyway, while he set his cities to produce catapults. Of course, his meager defenders couldn't protect his improvements and all of them got pillaged. His weak Axes couldn't protect the desert city from our powerful Swords, so the desert-iron city was razed to the ground. It was a damned place, were too many people had been whipped to death. The stack in Nanjing was destroyed easily, since he insisted on defending the city with his wounded Prats, instead of defending with his strong archers. In a desperate attemp, he sent his troups against Beijin, and he did a nice trick agains our Axe. He sent and Archer firt, who fought the Axe, wounding him and distracting him so that he became an easy pray for the Prats. Beijin fell.

But he was so stubborn that he wanted to repeat his strategy once and again: he sent most of his units North and Beijin was recovered by the Confederation. He turned back and retook it, but the Confederation counterstrike was powerful and he preferred to defend with his wounded Prats first, so Beijin was once again recovered. His last stack took a Genghis city in the South, but overwhelming forces killed every defender, so he was left OCC.

The Confederation offered him to surrender and a fair trial, but he refused,as was to be expected. The Confederation stacks waited outside the (recently built) city walls, giving him the opportunity to repent, and killing every unit that was sent out to protect an improvement. Finally he repeated his strategy once again and sent his last Prat and 4 Cats in a desperate mission. 9 armies attacked, with no luck. Another 16 armies were sent against the city, they all died and are today known as the 'heroes of the bloody walls'. His stack arrived to the Confucionist Shrine, so a sacrifice was needed. Countless armies were lost in the final assault around 500AD, were all the confedered families were represented. They succeeded in the end, took the city and killed jesusin. His stack, without a cause to die for, surrendered. The catapults reside today in the History Museum and can be visited from 9:00 to 18:00. The DNA of the surviving Prat is kept in secret in our Laboratories, just in case we should need brave fighters in the future.

And that's how the Confederation lost two capital cities but won 195 war heroes, while killing 43 rebels...

 

[Erkon]

Started on contender.

Embarassingly I was conquered in about 30 turns because I chose to build a worker first and didn't get away with it. In my shock, forgot to grab the auto save so no submit for me on this one.

...

Same here. My starting warrior wandered a bit too far and could not return in time to prevent an AI archer from razing Rome. Very disappointing and very arrogant play...

wilkofromoz, have you looked in the save folder? There should be a save file generated by the game that you can submit. I did.

 

[Markus5]

Contender.
Moved warrior and saw the gold hill. Settled SW. Queued up 2 warriors. My warrior explored the south area, never more than 5 moves from the capital. When the first warrior finished, he moved 3 NE to see what was there. When he arrived, he met Monty's scout. He attacked and won. Next turn, he headed home to heal with a shiny new star. The same turn, an English archer reaches our border from the SE. Two turns later, an unguarded Rome is sacked. Both warriors were marching home, but too late.

 

[Cletus]

Same here. My starting warrior wandered a bit too far and could not return in time to prevent an AI archer from razing Rome. Very disappointing and very arrogant play... ...

Same thing happened to me. I had played a few Always War games as Rome for practice before i tried it, and realized it was really tough. I had never tried AW previously. I had hoped the setup would give at least some distance or restrictive terrain , like maybe on a peninsula?

I've been trying this scenario repeatedly. I got to the point where i can take out the English by around 500 BC, but the hordes keep coming! I manage to get Confucism, figuring i need some religion for the long hall, but that may be one of my mistakes.

 

[Cletus]

Contender.
Moved warrior and saw the gold hill. Settled SW. ....

I did the same thing, moved the settler SW, but in later efforts realized that moved me away from the bronze! I found the square where the silk is to be the best spot, bronze & gold! with pigs & cows thrown in.

Normally, i would never put the city there without knowing where the bronze is ahead of time.

 

[Cletus]

...
And I didn't see the massive french stack coming....

And I didn't see the stack going for Rome neither . ..

In my many retries, i've found it hard to keep an eye on all the mobs swarming all over the place. Gotta be more careful than i usually am with so many enemies attacking from all directions.

 

[ngraner42]

...it seems like this game could make the Deity game look easy. That is, if we have Iron and Copper or Horses, otherwise it could really be bad.

It turned out to be the latter. At one point I had units on every road tile between the capitol and the Iron, to keep the precious metal flowing. It did not matter, both cities were sacked in the early AD.

 

[xXMugenXx]

In my many retries, i've found it hard to keep an eye on all the mobs swarming all over the place. Gotta be more careful than i usually am with so many enemies attacking from all directions.

I did the same thing, moved the settler SW, but in later efforts realized that moved me away from the bronze! I found the square where the silk is to be the best spot, bronze & gold! with pigs & cows thrown in.

Normally, i would never put the city there without knowing where the bronze is ahead of time.

Same thing happened to me. I had played a few Always War games as Rome for practice before i tried it, and realized it was really tough. I had never tried AW previously. I had hoped the setup would give at least some distance or restrictive terrain , like maybe on a peninsula?

I've been trying this scenario repeatedly. I got to the point where i can take out the English by around 500 BC, but the hordes keep coming! I manage to get Confucism, figuring i need some religion for the long hall, but that may be one of my mistakes.

1) Didn't think we were allowed to spam?

2) Didn't think we were allowed to retry?

 

[Markus5]

Play the game once, for real, following all the rules. Submit it. Then, replay the game as many times and in any way you want. It can't be submitted. But, you can try things. Or, be like me - submit and read the spoilers.

 

[wwassme]

I too lost early. An AI archer snuck past my perimeter and took out the warrior defending Rome before I could get a second defender there.

Oh well, more time to play with BtS this month.

 

[Cletus]

1) Didn't think we were allowed to spam?

2) Didn't think we were allowed to retry?

Sorry if you consider my posts spam.

I'm retrying for my own knowledge, not going to turn in score.

 

[Cletus]

14 posts in 4 & a half years, I'll try not to post so much.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Started on contender.

Embarassingly I was conquered in about 30 turns because I chose to build a worker first and didn't get away with it. In my shock, forgot to grab the auto save so no submit for me on this one.

Ha! I beat you! Conquest defeat in 15 turns. Total playing time must've been around - I'd guess about 3 minutes or so. Let anyone who wants to compete with me for the red ambulance give up now

Like you I built a worker first (well - started a worker first. 'Built' would've been some way in the future) - I reckoned I wouldn't be able to steal one early since no element of surprise with always war, and having a worker as early as possible would be in my best interests for around turn 30-40 when the barbs are showing up. I was more cautious than you with my warrior though, didn't explore too much before taking him home. However, an AI archer turned up, attacked, and won, even though my city and defending warrior was on a hill. I really don't know what I could reasonably have done differently, since short of building a warrrior first and not exploring at all -leaving both warriors in the capital, there just weren't enough turns to strengthen my defences in. I'm putting this down to very bad luck on the RNG.

I feel a little cheated, since I never got a chance to properly play this GOTM before getting conquered. I do love the always war setting and hope we have some more GOTMs with it on, but I also think something needs to be done to protect against this kind of situation. There's a difference between playing badly and therefore losing (which I've done and submitted for plenty of times), and getting defeated on pure chance when the game has scarcely started.

 

[da_Vinci]

@ DynamicSpirit: usually the archer left if it saw warrior in the city ... did yours get there one turn ahead of the archer, thus not fortified?

Maybe that is why archer attacked instead of moving on?

dV

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

@ DynamicSpirit

To have the first AI archer on the scene come attack your warrior in your capital on a hill and win vs long odds.... that sucks.

My own observations are what da_Vinci suggests; where an early AI unit would walk away if I had a defender in my city.

With the test save I got to a point where an archer just outside my border would take a step towards my city if I moved a warrior out of the capital and left it undefended for a turn. But if I moved the warrior back into my city the next turn the AI archer would go back to exploring.

By doing this repeatedly you can hold the enemy archer in limbo as it takes one step in...then one step out...then one step in...

(What if the Hokey Pokey really IS what its all about?)

 

[Lord British]

Adventurer

Well I decided after making contact with about 4 civs pretty quickly that my skill lvl wouldnt be up to the task of winning this game so I decided to make it a one city challenge and shoot for feudalism for longbows and see how long I could defend for.
I built my city on the sw hill so went for archery 1st, then animal husbandry for the cattle and pigs, but after that I made a beeline for feudalism. Managed to build the Oracle so feudalism was established in 1270bc.My next goal was to see if I could survive long enough to get to gunpowder but at 500ad I dont fancy my chances much. Longbows are holding Rome easily enough but the only squares I have protected now are the pigs, cattle, and gold so research is kinda slow and those units are close to having to pull back to the city so....
However at 500ad im still alive with about 15 longbows raking up experience like crazy. One of them has 80+ experience so as long as he holds on maybe I can last till gunpowder