GOTM 22 First Spoiler

[redemption438]

Contender - which was a bad decision.
Almost no experience with rapid conquest and never played as Romans.

Anyway, my game looks a lot like jesusin's... but he is more poetic than me! And more daring...

I'm surviving with 3 cities: Rome on the plains hill SW of starting position, Antium just a bit north to get the copper and ivory, and Cumae on desert iron to the west.

Played very defensively at first - warrior, warrior, worker, warrior, archer - and protected almost everything from the barbs, but in the meantime the AIs eventually hooked up their metals and horses. I should have harassed them as soon as I had axes/prats, but I couldn't seem to get enough units to spare.

The sort-of-plan became to pillage and take weak cities when I could, waiting for catapults and elephants to help the prats take out big cities. Tech path:
Hunting-Archery-BW-IW-Wheel-AH-Agri-Mysticism-Masonry-Writing-Math-Construction

But I've made little progress. It's now 200 AD. Louis and Toku have been showering me with units, and they are mostly weak but have to be dealt with. I'm on the offense more now, but it's slow. Have razed 5 cities.

Not long ago I got the message that the AIs have techs to trade. They don't! Not to me, anyway. But the leaders have everything up to math and alphabet.

So far, I've killed 158 units, and only lost 16. But it's not enough!

Might as well take more chances at this point...

 

[travolta]

Well, that was "fun" for my first GOTM. I founded Rome in the starting place and moved my archer to Rome right away. Then I scouted with my Warrior and my worker. The worker ran into some wolves on turn 5 or so, oops.

I teched straight to Iron Working and built 2 Warriors and timed my Settler the turn before Iron was revealed. Then founded my second city on top of the Iron and built a Praetorian right away. Some 40-50 turns later he was built and I tried to connect the cities with a worker defended by an Archer.

The AI took out my archer+worker and then my lone praetorian a couple of turns later. The second city fell shortly after that. The rest of the time was spent building archers that cowered behind the walls of Rome. I did get up to 28? XP on my best archer before he died.

I made it to 220-ish AD before Rome was sacked. Welcome to the boards, travolta.

 

[Grampaw]

No Iron in the fat cross? No chance to win...at least for me.
I still say no more than 3 will win this game.

 

[Mad Professor]

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

Well you're just lucky I was so shocked that I forgot to save the turn before I was wiped out, and the game hung as I lost, so I have nothing to submit. I managed conquest defeat in just eleven turns. I was even building a warrior first, but never got it built. My starting warrior wasn't even going far - just a quick circuit to scout possible second city locations before returning. Never got back. An English archer must have marched in a direct line from London to Rome, and captured it. End of game. Eleven turns. At least I didn't waste any precious time on this one!

Actually, Dynamic Spirit - even if I had been able to submit, you might have still got the red ambulance because Rome grew to size 2 the turn before it got captured and I had discovered hunting which means my score leapt to the dizzy heights of 54. If you were building a worker first Rome would still have been size 1, and you might have had the lower score.

 

[vixafox]

Based upon a couple of practice games, I knew that I couldn't win this one, so I went with the Oracle slingshot to Feudalism. This worked OK. I survived well enough. It was very boring though. Very long waits between turns whilst each AI in turn suicided its troops on my longbows.

Always War - what is it good for? Huh - absolutely nothing!!

 

[jesusin]

@redemption438: Your game is the most successful so far, keep up the good work!

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.

Hmmm. Please allow me to disagree.

I don't think it was bad luck. You took 2 strategic decisions, gambling a worker first and exploring, leaving an undefended capital. It turned out that they were bad decisions and you lost.

We (well, at least me) are so used to start the game with worker first that we have forgotten that it is a gamble. In a AW game, the normal way of starting the gaming should be worrying about the war. If you go worker first and you succeed, you will be miles ahead of the cautious players. But that is a gamble, you are taking risks.


I have liked AW a lot (would have liked more if I had being skilled enough to win ). In a sense it felt more like real Civilization. All my previous games feel a bit cheesy now (worker and settler first, my only copper tile unprotected all game long, huge stacks taking AI cities while there is a single defender in my cities, if any...).

 

[Htadus]

Ok let me repeat what I said after the practice game.

Ouch.......ouch...ouch.

As most of you, I too settled SW after seeing the gold. Built 2 warriors and a worker and chopped a settler. Settled the Hill NW of copper. connected and started an Axe when a lone Aztech archer showed up at Rome and took it . I had just moved out the second warrior to protect the copper from a Barb warrior and I was unwittingly healing him on the copper . once we had 4 Axes we took back Rome and added Elizabeths horse City and Monties Iron City to the north. Only built 4 Preats when the hell broke loose. Well you all know the ending. Now that I have submitted, it is time to go back and settle at the starting location and see what can be done.

BTW.....I wish that Raging Barbs were not turned on. I think that made it more difficult since most of the raiders were promoted several times and I think it is due to the barb factor. And lastly it is not 8 opponents that we played against. Nine.

 

[Mad Professor]

I don't think it was bad luck. You took 2 strategic decisions, gambling a worker first and exploring, leaving an undefended capital. It turned out that they were bad decisions and you lost.

We (well, at least me) are so used to start the game with worker first that we have forgotten that it is a gamble. In a AW game, the normal way of starting the gaming should be worrying about the war. If you go worker first and you succeed, you will be miles ahead of the cautious players. But that is a gamble, you are taking risks.

I was building a warrior first and lost even quicker than Dynamic Spirit! Sure I was still taking a gamble leaving an undefended capital, but not for very long. But obviously too long. If I really took these games seriously and my XOTM rating was an important part of my life I'd feel very badly done by in this one. Fortunately however, ratings are not the be all and end all, and it's only a game. I can still have fun trying it out again later.

 

[zafyro]

Not too much of a game I sent my warrior exploring SW but not too far just to avoid encountering enemy civs and having more chances to discover iron or cooper, built a warrior and moved it a bit to the north to search for some nice choke point to become fortified thinking on fog busting also while a made my third warrior (the one that was going to stay in garrison).

My culture expanded and new exploration discovered an english archer in the east one square nearer to my capital than my northern warrior... and that was then end.

I must admit I thought that ther were no enemies on what I considered my back and in fact they were the cosest... lol:

 

[man-erg]

Adventurer - Destroyed around 200 AD

Playing a few random map trials of AW had shown how difficult this would be. It seems that you only have a chance if the geography is in your favour, like being in a corner of Pangea map and having the iron nearby. Also having AI that has late UU's.

My plan was to tech straight to iron, with first settler built around this time to settle on the iron. Another thing I'd found in trials was that defending worked tiles was a nightmare, not so much the mines themselves, but the roads going back to the cities. In my best trial I'd built my 2nd city right on the iron allowing a steady stream of Praets.

Anyway, built Rome in place, guessing that Ainwood would've given us the goodies right there. Planted the Adventurer archer on the city, sent the warrior off to explore. The warrior was killed on about turn 3 by the first scout he met

Soon found copper in Rome's cross, not too pleased as I'm not sure if we'd be given both copper and iron in the starting city? Having said that, I thought we need some kind of gift as the landscape is nowhere near what I was hoping for. By around 2000 BC it looked as if we were around the middle of the continent. I'd found this to be the absolute worst position for an AW game. If you can get 1 or 2 fronts blocked by sea or mountains, you have a chance of surviving. Till 500AD, maybe.

Dismayed to find the iron off to the west in the middle if a desert! I was worried about having zero city growth if I built right on the iron, so built 2 to the east, which included some food. Terrible mistake! The cultural boundary never expanded to take in the second tile, so no Praets by 2000BC. I had been churning out axemen from Rome and used them to destroy the occasional attempt by the English to build next to Rome. However, by now (~1500BC), I'd met all the AI and had continual waves of invaders to deal with.

In dispair about ever getting Praets from my second city, I had another look at the map and noticed another iron had emerged off to the north. Yay! Build another settler to grab it - and this time I'll settle right on top of the precious iron. However, with settler party eventually on it's way, the Aztecs now build a city right next to the iron. So settler goes home and a raiding party, with worker, heads north. Won the city and eventually manage to make my first Praetorian. Trouble is it's now around 500BC and some other UU's and swordsmen are starting to appear.

Rome had grown to around 5, desert city stuck on 2. Sent spare settler to build Cumae, in the south where it was at least out of the way of the hordes. I could't build enough military to defend the iron city from continual attack from Aztecs, Japan and France. Large Mongol stacks were attacking from the east and it was obvious I would barely get to 0AD. Sure enough, Cumae, my last city fell around 200AD.

First thoughts are that it is impossible to win this game. Building the iron city in the desert would have helped, but there's still a long road from there back to Rome. I'm now wondering if it would have been better to ignore the iron, concentrated purely on Axemen to take out the English first, then the Aztecs to the North. Use the iron in the north for Praets, or perhaps not bother with them and head for Longbows to get a military advantage. In some ways the raging barbs were as much a problem as the AI. The promotion gain outweighed by incessant pillaging.

I'm keen to hear how this is won - if at all.

 

[xXMugenXx]

Woo, I seem to be the only one able to destroy a civilization!

 

[Jamesds]

Really sorry for posting in the other thread ainwood , I wasn't aware of such things as spoiler threads (first GOTM), guess I should've read the rules.

Anyway, I thought I'd come here looking for help. I'm a noble player, looking to move up to Prince soon from a good noble victory. A monarch game is a bit out of my style, and I thought always war would be interesting - it turns out this is impossible, and I'm wondering whether anyone could actually win this.

So, I settled on the hill SW of the starting position. I chose adventurer, so my worker mined the hills, and my archer defended the city. Before long, I was swarmed with Barbarian archers. It was hard to develop my land and economy with the constant pillaging of my resources. At one point, I lost it all - that wasn't the last time. I deployed as many archers and such as I could to defend my resources, which kinda worked, except for when they cut off my roads and chased my worker.

My second city was north, having the copper 2 square south of it. Once that was developed, it was hard to keep it. I got axemen, (also got stonehenge in my capital, thought that was an achievement ) and patrolled my lands. I captured a barbarian city which had the iron in it, near the desert. Defended it, and kept 7 axes down there to protect it (3 on the iron, 1 on the hill leading from the iron to the city).

I only was able to build one Praetorian in that city, since my capital road was cut, and that Praetorian had to defend that city.

I'm now at Turn 200, armies sweeping my lands, my techs aren't making any headway, and I'm waiting for the strong armies to come and wipe me off the map.

Is it worth submitting a failed game, where my score is only about 445? Also this is my second try, and I guess that isn't allowed anyway? (even though I did better in my first try, had 4 cities then, but not stonehenge)

 

[wwassme]

Is it worth submitting a failed game, where my score is only about 445? Also this is my second try, and I guess that isn't allowed anyway?

You can only submit your first try. The second try is "reloading" and was played with advance knowledge of the map.

It is worth submitting a failed game. While it won't get you many points towards the global rankings, you will receive a few. That's better than zero points for no submission at all.

 

[karmina]

Contender class - 500 AD, 5 cities and still alive, but losing ground quickly, too quickly...

Settled 1SW and built worker first for the invaluable gold mine.
Work order: worker - warrior - barracks - archer
Tech path: Hunting - AH - Archery - BW - IW

2440: first AI archers attack Rome, barb archers 2110.

1870: discovered IW, 1840 settler produced...by that time my warriors had discovered 3 Iron deposits, and none of the sites was actually attractive, close enough to Rome and defendable. We went for the northern one, settling on the hill between fish & iron, and only 1 turn before Monty would have been there. Generally a nice place with a lighthouse (many lake tiles!), but on the other hand the fish was undefendable, and protecting the Iron was a pain. Lost a couple of Praets there, and nonetheless Iron got pillaged once or twice until 500 AD.

1450: Copper connected
1330: 1st Roman axe
1090: Sailing (purely for Antium's lighthouse, maybe a mistake)
1060: Louis, the last and most powerful AI, finds Rome and declares war
1030: Iron connected
955 BC: 1st Praetorian built and 1st city captured (Montys)

Around 750 BC we captured the two nearest English towns, while barb axemen began to harass Rome; Tlateloco was lost to some AI but regained quickly.

From that on the Roman Empire raced to the height of its power, with some impressive achievements:

475 years BC Confucianism was founded, and the gods, simultaneously delighted by an architectural masterpiece known as "The Oracle", granted Rome the knowledge of quite advanced ahem...wisdom: Bureaucracy.
However, the CS Slingshot did take its toll: Nottingham was lost for quite some centuries, and several resources could not be protected by the dwindling Roman army during that time.
Still euphoric though (and further motivated by a great scientist 205 BC), Rome became World Power Number One upon capturing Teotihuacan 160 BC.

Tragically though, Julius Caesar rested on these questionable laurels, making some rather inconsequent not to say arrogant decisions: He researched Mathematics for chopping first but did not continue on Construction; instead he headed for Monarchy. Now you might think: "Not so bad, early Longbows await..." but alas, proud of his Praetorians, Julius Caesar longed for Poly-,Monotheism and Theocracy more, and thus failed to discover Feudalism let alone Machinery before 500 AD.
Furthermore, his rather pathetic legions wanted to conquer London and the far, far away Aztec capital - not a chance, but at least they pillaged the country so that no English or Aztec army would harass Rome for many centuries to come.

In the meantime, the other wild European tribes obviously ally with China and Mongolia, and begin their preparations to crush Rome once and for all...

245 AD the first Roman city gets razed, while numerous Chariots, Horsearchers and Keshiks devastate Roman territory. Both Isabella and Louis retake their lead in score, power, and -presumably- tech over Rome.

455 AD the first War Elephant crosses Roman borders.
The last forest directly in front of the city walls of Rome is inhabited by an ever growing number of enemies. It's a bad joke that these trees still stand and prevent us from striking back, as the majority of the fallen (a total of 200 enemies up to now) must be buried there...some 7 turns left until Feudalism...I know we will see Roman Longbowmen...but I doubt Rome will see the second Millenium, let alone have the power to turn the tide and win this game.

Stats 500 AD: 16 Praets 8 Archers 1 Axe 3 Worker
Lost already: 16 Praets 10 Archers 4 Axes 1 Worker

(BTW the Praetorian losses remind me of the main reason I refused to play civ since gotm4: the annoying, embarassing randoms*it combat system. Nearly all of my losses occured at planned attacks with 85-95% odds in favor for Rome. Something like this might be realistic, but it isn't fun nor encourages tactical play. And it makes this gotm22 even harder, where you simply cannot afford to lose the occasional battle due to bad luck, because of your tiny numbers compared to the enemy's.)/*rant off*/

Fun game though up to now; I like how this tends to play out historically quite correct, with Rome the world leader around 0AD, but under constant and growing siege later.

 

[Simon_c]

@ 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

That's what happened to me too ! I figure if I'd have headed straight there instead of taking out a scout, I'd have just about managed it. I lost at 3640bc, so I think I'm in there for the ambulance award. I don't feel quite to foolish now I'm not the only one who did it.

On replaying (for education) I managed to keep roam just be keeping a warrior there, but still very very tough. I've left the game so I can think how to approach it when I found no iron nearby.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

@ 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?

Possibly, I did get there just before the archer. That would be an interesting lesson about how the AI works. That would imply that the AI doesn't head for cities if there are units in there at that stage, but will attack cities with units in if it happens to already be standing next to one. Seems slightly odd logic to me but maybe...

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Hmmm. Please allow me to disagree.

Wot??? Disagree with me??? Don't you realize that's absolutely not allowed?

I don't think it was bad luck. You took 2 strategic decisions, gambling a worker first and exploring, leaving an undefended capital. It turned out that they were bad decisions and you lost.

I can certainly see some logic in that. Perhaps they were risky decisions - they didn't look risky on the basis of the couple of test games I tried - those games seemed to suggest that there was a reasonable window at the beginning when even with always war, the AI wouldn't attack cities. What I've learned on reading this thread suggests those were riskier decisions after all. However, I don't think you can plausibly not describe the roll of the RND generator as not being luck

If the situation is as your and other posts suggests, then that seems to imply that the *only* strategy that doesn't stand a high chance of an early conquest defeat is to leave your initial warrior in the starting city (possibly: To build another warrior first too). It'd be a real shame if it turns out there is only one sensible opening move that everyone needs to follow for the first 10-20 turns

I have liked AW a lot (would have liked more if I had being skilled enough to win ). In a sense it felt more like real Civilization. All my previous games feel a bit cheesy now (worker and settler first, my only copper tile unprotected all game long, huge stacks taking AI cities while there is a single defender in my cities, if any...).

This was certainly a cool game, and I still hope we have some more always-war GOTMs (definitely not on any higher level than monarch though - that would be really impossible ) FWIW I've just tried replaying, keeping my strategy but changing my initial warrior route a little to change the RNG results. In that game the archer didn't come near Rome, and got to about 0BC before it became obvious that the AI forces were going to overwhelm me. The crossover from apparently doing rather well to suddenly finding the attacks were too much came very suddenly - in the space of a few turns.

 

[da_Vinci]

(BTW the Praetorian losses remind me of the main reason I refused to play civ since gotm4: the annoying, embarassing randoms*it combat system. Nearly all of my losses occured at planned attacks with 85-95% odds in favor for Rome. Something like this might be realistic, but it isn't fun nor encourages tactical play. And it makes this gotm22 even harder, where you simply cannot afford to lose the occasional battle due to bad luck, because of your tiny numbers compared to the enemy's.)/*rant off*/

While I sympathize with the frustration, and have felt that way when I lose those 85+% combats, I don't think you can justifiably criticize the game for it.

Did I miss the part in the civilopedia where it says praetorians start with the invincibility promotion? At 85% "odds" (seems like they really mean "probability", since true odds are something else ...right DaviddesJ? ) if you lose one out of seven or so, that is not bad luck, that is what you expect. You need 99.9% "odds" to expect to lose none.

Now the game does have an RNG system that seems to string several high "odds" losses together in succession, and that can be pretty frustrating. But I suspect that over the long run, the combat results match the probabilities ... but that does not guarantee any particular result in any one combat.

dV

 

[da_Vinci]

That's what happened to me too ! I figure if I'd have headed straight there instead of taking out a scout, I'd have just about managed it. I lost at 3640bc, so I think I'm in there for the ambulance award. I don't feel quite to foolish now I'm not the only one who did it.

IIRC I was dead at 35 AD, having delayed founding copper city too long and Qin settled there, then sent all 7 archers at it in desparation and still could not kill 2 defending ones. My culture allowed me to work copper eventually, but defending the road was all I could do, never got to the iron.

And I did not manual save, started a replay for fun, then discovered that the save on exit had not made a save. Autosaves were gone, so no submission. Hall of fame says my normalized score is 0 anyway ... so if that is true of these early loses, how is the red ambulance tie adjudicated?

On the second try (just for education, of course ) I decided to still settle SW for hill and gold, early copper city, then a west iron city. That has gone better, having razed two English cities, one Aztec city (founded on English rubble) and one Mongolian city (keeping looked undefendable, but maybe keeping is needed to spead out the attacks?) ... and defending OK for now. But what happens when the praets get obsolete?

Possibly, I did get there just before the archer. That would be an interesting lesson about how the AI works. That would imply that the AI doesn't head for cities if there are units in there at that stage, but will attack cities with units in if it happens to already be standing next to one. Seems slightly odd logic to me but maybe...

@DS: I recall in the pregame thread seeing a discussion that archer would not move toward a warrior garrisoned city, but would move toward an empty city. Seems like simple programming to write that. Then, if a warrior shows up just as archer arrives adjacent to city, it can't be fortified (or 5% at most), so the warrior is hard pressed to defend at 3 against the archer. Seems logical to program the AI to press the archer attack, as odds are likely 50% or better if not on hill. It would be interesting to see if a worldbuilder sim shows a fixed behavior of the AI archer in this scenario.

dV

 

[Cletus]

While I sympathize with the frustration, ...

It is frustrating when i get a string of bad luck. I swear it seems the odds aren't what they say they are, but i haven't done a scientific study.