GOTM 23 Final Spoiler

[Balbes]

Incredible research rates! But disappointing Oxford date.

Because I'd started cottaging late (especially so in conquered lands including Beijing), an early Oxford wouldn't have had much of an effect for me.

Are you still happy with your decision of ignoring Democracy?

I ignored Emancipation because I needed to run Slavery, but I researched Democracy for Universal Suffrage mainly for the +1 hammer bonus and switched to it. I built the Statue too.

I don't understand why my game had more GP than yours, when I was so slow to set up my NE. Maybe since I captured Pyramids and used Representation

What about Pacifism?

Balbes, get real. The challenger handicap is for mere mortals. Not for Eptathletes.

Jesusin is going to win the Eptathlon very soon, so I'm happy to compete with him.

 

[Thrallia]

Well I especially like Organized Religion because it lets you build Missionaries without Monasteries. that makes it a lot easier to spread religion around, I find. And of course 25% off all of those cultural buildings is a plus.

you know, OR allows you to build missionaries without monasteries even if you don't have a state religion.

 

[Steve the Noble]

Space race victory for me.

When it was clear that metal was nowhere in sight, a domination or space victory become my goal. At least I had ivory to knock out Mao early to grab some much needed land.

I made Astronomy a priority so that I could build some galleons and claim the large island at the centre of the ring. It worked - I ended up controlling the island, with 6 cities on it, three of them of size 12 or larger.

I crushed Monty with Riflemen to grab some more land and nice production cities. I reached the population requirement for domination, but the land area requirement would have needed eliminating another opponent, which I felt would take too long. So I bee-lined for the Space Elevator and built the spaceship in 1958. The late date affected the score - 11396.

- 24 cities, 9 built, 3 razed
- two rivals eliminated (Mao and Montezuma)
- no for the whole game

Top 5 Built: Rifleman (29), War Elephant (18), Catapult (15), Cannon (12), Work Boat (10).
Top 5 Killed: Horse Archer (38), Catapult (37), Longbowman (33), Caravel (24), Galley (15).

I think Monty wasted his resources on too many unused boats!

 

[YakieS1]

This was my first GOTM...

I was very impressed how the map-maker balanced the difficulty level (Noble) with some in-game nuances (No iron, copper, or horses within easy reach) to keep everyone guessing. Good times!

The game started off slow for me, and I got seriously behind as I went searching for horses and metals. I expanded toward China, but barbarians got a foothold between myself and Rome, and sending archers their way (I didn't have construction yet) was just suicide.

The solution, since I did have a galleon or two, was to establish a colony by the copper between the Aztecs and the English. That took some turns, but once I had copper, I was able to get the barbarians under control and expand to meet Rome.

Rome was the only competitor who was friendly to me, though, so I didn't want to attack them for their horses (I wanted cavalry for mid-game conquest). This let to some more delay until i could establish a base on the center island to get horses and fight the barbarians there...

All this wandering around cost me a lot of time, but thanks to the difficulty it didn't doom me.

The end result was a Domination win in the mid to late 1800's, defeating China, England, America, and France in that order.

 

[Kanidyen]

Challenger 1937 cultural win. I'm not too happy with that time at all, but with the arid land Germany had from the start, I knew this was going to be late.

I don't have my original write up since my main computer and monitor are shot thanks to a power surge... but here's what I can remember:

I accidently built 7 cities instead of just 6. I stopped researching at Liberalism, which I found was also a mistake. Three religions were enough with Parth, Sis Chapel, and I think Taj or Notre Dame. Toward the end, I played the diplomatic game badly, and France DoWed. Last GA popped for last legendary city two turns before Louis would take it... way close.

-----

This was my first GotM. One of the things about this site is that you can learn so much. I actually turned around and started a second game, finished with a much cleaner 1883 victory. Only built 6 cities, much easier to manage. Stopped research at Democracy, keeping up with techs and diplomacy better. Much cleaner with wonders and micromanaging specialist, and I also think I popped two more GAs. Wish I had my writeups to convey more...

 

[jesusin]

Tech
I got could feet and made the detour to construction to get some phants to not make the AI have silly ideas. Generally I had to resource a lot more when I liked becase the AI was to far behind to have anything useful. Lib in 1190 with no techs bubbled. Ok I guess?

Culture buildings
Hermitage and a shrine in Minuch and 2 shrines in Berlin. I hade 6 cities and 3 religions so I could have build more temple/shrines but for once I becase lazy and I also decided the Berlin and Munich needed to work the cottaged instead of mines to get anything going. I do not know if this was stupid or not.

Conclusion
1804 is not great but given my lack of experience with cultural and end game lazyness I guess it is all right?

Nicely planned and nice result.

Liberalism in 1190AD sounds late to me, I think you paid the price of having cottages only in your capital.

I guess you are talking about cathedrals, not shrines here. If it is so, I am absolutely sure you should have built more of them.

All in all, it looks like a very promising starting point for someone that doesn't play cultural often.

 

[jesusin]

What about Pacifism?

Nop, directly to FR, I ignored religions and didn't build a single missionary.

I run a bit of Merc+Repr though. But you had your SoL, so I still can't account for my additional GPs.

 

[jesusin]

Jesusin is going to win the Eptathlon very soon, so I'm happy to compete with him.

Thanks for trusting my capabilities so much!

I am crossing my fingers, I'd like to win the fastest space award this game.


But heptathlon requires also a gold and a cow. I don't think I will try to go for those. Gold? that's the most points, and what are points? With the current definition of point I don't see it makes a lot of sense. Cow? That implies playing to 2050AD and avoiding to win "by mistake". Avoiding victory is not my stile, I want to win and I want to win asap. That's why my goal is always fastest whatever. Is there a Pentathlon for people like me?

Please, dont get me wrong. I am not saying that I could win gold or cow if I wanted to. Since I have never been interested in points, I have never tried to maximize them, so I am probably the least experienced played around.

Being recognised as an heptathlete would be great, of course. But why should I force me into playing games I dislike? Specially when I can play for culture game after game from now on!

 

[Lexad]

But heptathlon requires also a gold and a cow.

Nope, only cow, although Obormot once proposed to replace it with gold (support here). You don't need wait until 2050 to get cow, unless someone is going for it too. And here you will meet your most fearsome adversary - boredom Good luck though!

 

[jesusin]

Nope, only cow, although Obormot once proposed to replace it with gold (support here).

Oh, you are right. I would also prefer gold to cow.

 

[DarkAmen]

I tried for a time victory with this - but.. there allways seems to be so many nice to own.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Nope, only cow, although Obormot once proposed to replace it with gold (support here). You don't need wait until 2050 to get cow, unless someone is going for it too. And here you will meet your most fearsome adversary - boredom Good luck though!

I dislike changing criteria, because then those who have already met or partially met the criteria get messed up.

Not a problem for me, but if you insist, I suggest 5 entirely new criteria, so you have to start all over...

 

[wwassme]

What about making it an alternative: gold or the cow?

 

[Lexad]

@LtC

Three out of four active Eptathletes (Grey Cardinal, Balbes and me) have won gold, and Abarach is legendary enough without it. Experiencing the pain of soulless milking twice (for GOTM and WOTM), I see no challenge in this contest, unlike gold medal. I voted for replacing cow with gold even before winning gold, as it is much more reflects the spirit of GOTM.

 

[LowtherCastle]

soulless milking

Well, I can only see three options for you poor suffering souls...:

1) Accomplish eptathlete again but on Challenger level (looks like Balbes is already trying); or

2) Use your genius to figure out how to get highest Cow score a whole lot faster; or

3) Patiently await BtSOTM.

 

[Lawrence]

Well, here's the response from a guy who just milked his way up to 2050!

Actually, it is not that bore using Modern Armors to shoot off Riflemen... My first experience on that!

Time victory in 2050AD, base score 12737, total score 12778.

Played very loosely, no one else is competing with me right? Like I said in the first spoiler, I even missed CS slingshot. Then I built a Pyramid-based scientist economy, with very few cottages so I don't need to farm a lot of cottages to milk the game. Have to say that this type of economy is too bad, compared with the cottage-based economy. I never did real milking, like farming all the lands and make cities with 40+ pops.

Instead, I tried to maximize my scientific output to research many future techs. Ended up with discovering Future Tech 72 with the first one popping in 1786. I could have done much better if I have focused on founding religions in the very beginning of the game. But 72 maybe enough already for me to go back home in Beta Centauri, the 10th brightest star of the night sky .

In the end, you may like a few "OH YEAH"s

 

[Mad Professor]

@Lawrence: The thing I like about Berlin in your picture is the 442 beakers/turn without a single cottage That and the single warrior defending it...

 

[jesusin]

Well, I can only see three options for you poor suffering souls...:

1) Accomplish eptathlete again but on Challenger level (looks like Balbes is already trying); or

2) Use your genius to figure out how to get highest Cow score a whole lot faster; or

3) Patiently await BtSOTM.

All three options lead to playing yet more milking games. My soul keeps

 

[toller pretzl]

In the end, you may like a few "OH YEAH"s

Where do they come from, those 72 "OH YEAH"s ? I think I've only seen a few when I played a charismatic leader.

 

[Lawrence]

Where do they come from, those 72 "OH YEAH"s ? I think I've only seen a few when I played a charismatic leader.

1 Future Tech gives 1 health and 1 happiness. And these happinesses are represented by an "OH YEAH".