GOTM 27 Final Spoiler

[Conquistador 63]

As mentioned in my first spoiler, my goal was a fast diplo. However, by 500AD I had made enough mistakes to lose any hope to get the "fastest" diplo. Too little fog-busting, too few cities, too many Gprophets. etc etc, you name it.

Anyway, I didn't let it discourage me and proceeded my way to Mass Media (ca.1500, far from optimal), with a GE waiting for help build the UN. In this process I got nothing more than Astro with Lib, and my 1st GS (for the capitol academy) was the free one from Physics! If anyone is still reading this post, after these undoubted proofs of sub-standard play, I can assure you that worse news were yet to come.

My diplomatic grand strategy involved a late attack of buddhist HC with the help of jewish Monty, Vic, Sal & Pete, then building UN in a former inca city and gifting it back, while keeping #1 slot in pop. Plan B was grabbing a barb city in Alex's land and building UN there/gifting it to Alex.

Too cheesy to be successful, I suppose. After a brief initial land grab from HC, with Monty's support in the 700's, Monty decided he should grab lands nearer to his own capital. He then proceeded to eliminate Vic from the game, getting an unreachable pop lead.

Just to keep him busy after that, I bribed him to join my war vs Capac, who just wasted a ton of knights attacking my rifles in his former landbridge city to the NE.

By the mid 1600's Capac was gone, but main threat was Peter who was teching like crazy. Luckily enough, I was able to bribe the UN SecGen (Monty ) to attack Peter's infantry and cavs with his countless knights and elephants! . I did not know Monty valued Democracy that much! Surprisingly enough, that was a long war which ended in a stalemate near 1800, but Peter's tech progress suffered a lot. I guess the sheer number of Monty's troops did the trick.

Of course, I had abandoned any hopes of Diplo win a long time ago and was shooting for space instead (call it a backdoor win if you please ). This fun game was finished 1847AD - three turns later than wwassme's. Things could've been a lot worse if Monty decided to call a diplo vote in the centuries he sat in the SecGen chair, so I consider myself lucky to manage to walk away with a win.

 

[Ronnie1]

The sad part for me was that I was actually aiming for space, but playing so poorly in soooooo many ways, 1875 was when I got to the stars.

I also played this game over a very long period of time. Trying to fit in Gotms, Wotms, Botms, and our succession game is proving to be very difficult from a real life standpoint. No practice games, playing too quickly, not slowing down to test scenarios like farming wheat on ice (WOTM 16 anyone), all lead to rather average at best results.

But all of the games are so darn much fun, it's hard to ignore the opportunities!

Thanks to the staff for giving us so many options!

 

[Htadus]

Space win in mid 19th century. Can't remember the date. Had a reasonable start, very good cities, and then just went through the motions. Never attacked Monty or Capac as I originally planned. Monty was at least strong but Capac. He was a sad case. Several times I sent units to see if it was time to attack and saw puny archers defending but I never did. Why? I do not know.

When Monty, who was pleased most of the game, asked to join in beating Vic, I said yest and took all her good cities in 2 wars. Too bad Monty did not do the same with Capac early. Boy that Peter.... He had a few Cities but he know how to tech. We kept each other on the top untill Sal took the lead. Awsome game overall. Thank you to the staff for a challenging game. It was a fun game made mediocre by this player. to me.

 

[Bleys]

Lost to HC, space, dont remember the year, was rather annoyed overall. I ended up taking out Vicky and most of Monty, while Sal grabbed a couple cities from Monty as well, and Peter ended up culture-flipping a couple of Montys citys from me, I'm still a rookie when it comes to that stuff.

I tried to punch into HCs territory at the end, but he was too well defended, ahead of me in tech, and overall just a beast of a turtle, since he had basically been left to himself the whole game. I wish I had done things differently, thats for sure. Oh well, on to the next one!

 

[MacBalt]

Got a late start and had to rush to get this one in on time. The score and date is no great shakes, but it's my first Challenger save, so I'll use that as an excuse to celebrate anyway.

Settled on the plains hill to the South.
AH-Myst-Med-PH-Writng-Wheel-BW-Pottery-CoL (from Oracle). Traded like a madman after Alphabet. Missed music and liberalism. Blasted barbarians raised my third city. (Okay, I was a bit stupid too, but they got some lucky rolls all the same...) Built Oracle, Great Library and Sistine Chapel. Conquered (eventually) the Pyramids and Parthenon in Tenochtitlan. Failed to do it on my first attempt though because Monty's capital was much farther away from my territory than I expected. Overextended my armies and lost a good conquered city (for a few turns). Luckily Monty endeared himself to everyone the way he usually does and I was able to get in on an everyone-pile-on-Monty rumble that landed me the cities I had been hoping for. It also set up some good relationships and a defense pact with Saladin that, I think, kept HC off my back in the late game. On the stupid side I ran pacifism for many centuries without having declared any state religion (brilliant, I know). Oh well, progress is progress. There was a time (before CivFanatics) when I would have counted an 1856 cultural victory a huge success even on Prince level!

Jesusin continues to amaze me. No problem staying humble when those spoilers pop up -- keep 'em coming please, Jesusin. Someday your lessons will penetrate deep enough to keep me focused on my cultural game plan!

 

[jesusin]

Got a late start and had to rush to get this one in on time. The score and date is no great shakes, but it's my first Challenger save, so I'll use that as an excuse to celebrate anyway.

Hey, I didn't know you were also a culture addict!

Congratulations on your victory, this wasn't an easy game.


Just a quick comment. Why GLIB? Didn't you get swarmed by tons of useless late GS?

 

[jesusin]

@Erkon

Thank you very much for the data.
It is not enough, though. What was your culture output the turn you went 100% culture? And the previous turn? I can't see which city built which cathedral either.

I feel a bit embarrased to do the comparison of our games myself, being the one with the best date. I might feel better when Nicklas comes around to beat both our dates. RL is getting on the way too so I don't have the time to do a proper comparison.

There are some key things that come to mind without too much analysis:

- We both stated our strategies. I implemented mine, (10cotages-10cottages-7artists) but you didn't implement yours (10cottages-10cottages-5 cottages). 5 is too low. You paid a high price in terms of GA, while you didn't get a return for your investment in the third city.
On a side note, 5 cathedrals per city can be too much. Specially in such a poor third city.

- Liberalism date is key. Or even better: the key is the turn you switch to 100% culture. With 2 gold in capital and no barbs you should aim at a BC date. In real game 500AD was reasonable. I researched too slowly. Your techpath is just unfocused.

- Endgame: Planning is key. You HAVE to know the turn you will win. You have to know that at 500AD or at least at 1000AD. You were not behind at 500AD. The endgame was very different for both of us. I knew exactly how many turns were ahead and how I would squeeze 1 (or 3) more GAs. I knew exactly when to transform artists into merchants. I knew exactly when it is better to build the theater before the cathedral.



Just an example to get an idea how to plan. You took PP from Liberalism. I would have chosen Nationalism in both our games, probably.
If you get PP, you have to research some 14 turns further to get Nationalism. You also delay Hermitage. But you get an additional commerce in each cottage, which gets multiplied by cathedrals factors, etc. Which is better? The real calculation is rather complex. I will just do a quick simplified run: the turn I set the slider to 100% culture I was doing as little as 550cpt. By choosing Natio, I have 14 additional turns at 100% culture, or 7700culture. If I had chosen PP, I would have got PP 75 turns sooner than in my game. The first 14 doesn't affect culture, since I would be at 100% science. The following 61 I would enjoy the additional commerce. Assuming 3 cathedral per city at the time (I had much less, but maybe your game had them), assuming FS, assuming the 25 cottages in your game, 25*3.5*61= 5337culture.
There are a dozen factors I am not taking into account (the most important one being the 14-turn-delayed Hermitage), but anyway, I can't find a reason to justify PP instead of Natio.

 

[Niklas]

I can't seem to find the time to write a proper spoiler, so I'll just give the raw gist of it. After my abyssmal start, almost losing to the barbs, I managed to consolidate and pull off a cultural victory in 1827 AD. My best cultural date, despite the horrible start.

In the end I had 5 religions, two cottage cities with 5 cathedrals in each (and one had hermitage too), my capitol had NE and a bunch of wonders, and bombed its way to keep up with the other towns. I did get a bunch of unwanted non-GA GPs, but I managed to put them to good use. The two GEs each rushed a cathedral, and the late GP gave me Islam.

I teched up to Steel before going 100% culture, simply because I was not strong enough to stay safe otherwise. Towards the end Alex attempted an invasion of me using knights and cats, and boy was I glad for my cannons then.

Next time...

 

[MacBalt]

Hey, I didn't know you were also a culture addict!

One of my first learning experiences at CivFanatics was reading "Godotnut's Guide to Totally Peaceful Diety Cultural Victory." It really helped me get a handle on the game, and it played nicely toward my peaceful/builder victory-type tendencies. Since then I've been trying to get better at violence , but culture will always be where my heart is...

Just a quick comment. Why GLIB? Didn't you get swarmed by tons of useless late GS?

I ended up with four Great Scientists, but three of the four came early and my last four or five Great Persons were all artists. I guess I got reasonably lucky on that score. (The Oracle was in the mix too. I used one Great Prophet for the Confucian Holy City and had to settle the relatively useless second one.) Frankly, building the Great Library is an old habit I need to break -- and an example of one of the things I meant by saying I need to stay more focused on my cultural game plan. I'd give you more exact numbers on my total number of Great Artists at the end, but I ended up rushing and only kept good notes through about 1100 AD. I know I bombed one in my second city and at least seven in my laggard third city. One good thing... I somehow managed to get all three cities to go legendary on back to back turns (465 & 466) without wasting many points over the 75,000 threshold. Thanks for taking an interest - and for your excellent game posts.

 

[Erkon]

...Thank you very much for the data.
It is not enough, though. What was your culture output the turn you went 100% culture? And the previous turn? I can't see which city built which cathedral either.
...
- We both stated our strategies. I implemented mine, (10cotages-10cottages-7artists) but you didn't implement yours (10cottages-10cottages-5 cottages). 5 is too low. You paid a high price in terms of GA, while you didn't get a return for your investment in the third city.
On a side note, 5 cathedrals per city can be too much. Specially in such a poor third city.

- Liberalism date is key. Or even better: the key is the turn you switch to 100% culture. With 2 gold in capital and no barbs you should aim at a BC date. In real game 500AD was reasonable. I researched too slowly. Your techpath is just unfocused.

- Endgame: Planning is key. You HAVE to know the turn you will win. You have to know that at 500AD or at least at 1000AD. You were not behind at 500AD. The endgame was very different for both of us. I knew exactly how many turns were ahead and how I would squeeze 1 (or 3) more GAs. I knew exactly when to transform artists into merchants. I knew exactly when it is better to build the theater before the cathedral.



Just an example to get an idea how to plan. You took PP from Liberalism. I would have chosen Nationalism in both our games, probably.
If you get PP, you have to research some 14 turns further to get Nationalism. You also delay Hermitage. But you get an additional commerce in each cottage, which gets multiplied by cathedrals factors, etc. Which is better? The real calculation is rather complex. I will just do a quick simplified run: the turn I set the slider to 100% culture I was doing as little as 550cpt. By choosing Natio, I have 14 additional turns at 100% culture, or 7700culture. If I had chosen PP, I would have got PP 75 turns sooner than in my game. The first 14 doesn't affect culture, since I would be at 100% science. The following 61 I would enjoy the additional commerce. Assuming 3 cathedral per city at the time (I had much less, but maybe your game had them), assuming FS, assuming the 25 cottages in your game, 25*3.5*61= 5337culture.
There are a dozen factors I am not taking into account (the most important one being the 14-turn-delayed Hermitage), but anyway, I can't find a reason to justify PP instead of Natio.

I don't have a save from 1500, only a couple of turns later, so these values are perhaps slightly too high:

Commerce : 123 - 143 - 55
Base Culture : 80 - 91 - 81
Culture @ 100% : 572 - 591 - 243
Cottages : 11 - 15 - 11

I could shift mature cottages to the third city if I wanted, so I used the sharing to optimize the usage of GA's. At the end, I bombed my capital with one GA as well, not only the weak city. If I remember my initial strategy, it was to run three cottage cities, and generate the GA's in the satellite cities. The other part of my strategy was to not build cottages in the satellite cities, and use Merchants instead.

There is a point where running an artist is better than running a mine. In one example, removing the miner and turn him into an artist will add 15 turns to completion of a cathedral. At 200% cultural multiplier, that is 4x15x3=180 culture from artist. 15 turns with 50% from cathedral is 412,5 culture. So I think that even late cathedrals are better than running artists.

You are correct that my research path is crazy. The Liberalism date should be equal to when you go 100% gold. While you save gold, the satellite cities build temples and grows, while Legendary cities build temples and cathedrals. To fully utilize all cathedrals, it's vital that you run 100% culture, not 90% culture at the end. I didn't perfect this strategy, since I saved too much gold, and my unit upkeep was too high, and I built units instead of running merchants.

You may be correct with PP and Nationalism. I will have to calculate next time when I have the correct numbers.

Regarding End Game Planning: the answer is simple - I don't enjoy playing that kind of game. It's too much accounting, and too little fun. You will always beat me there

 

[hellwitch]

1667 Domination

I submit the save 3 min before the deadline. becase i've made the last ~ 100 this morning.

I could achive domination at least 200 years erlier but the randommess kick my ass early on. I losse my second town to the barbs on ~ 90% chance and from there on the chance continue to srike me : 2 turn later barb city 1 tile off my 2nd city ,then later 3 looses on 68% odd and so on. till the end i lost so many over 90% odd battles that i becane furious but at least i finnished the game.

 

[da_Vinci]

Having been goaded by DynamicSpirit into posting my disasters as well as my successes, here is a recent disaster story.

Went SW and settled on the plains hill near the gold. Then I was just too slow expanding or developing ... to few cities early, beat to oracle, you know... that kind of stuff. 160 BC Vic settled a city on my west border that I needed to attack, so war was on ... peace 110 AD after I razed and resettled it.

Vic DOW'ed back on me 290 AD in a war that lasted to 1148 AD with no land changing hands. I was hemmed in by the AI, so 1154 I declared on Monte to expane NW. That went nowhere, peace in 1310.

Then Monte declared on me in 1448 ... it is sad when MONTE has more advanced units than you do ... It became clear that he would take a couple of cities right away, and that there was no long term defense, so I retired (better to spend the time on a winnable XOTM).

dV