GOTM 28 Spoiler 3 - Modern Age / End Game Submitted

[zagnut]

A balanced approach always seems best to me. While it may not result in the highest score, it makes me happier to know that while my troops are away conquering other civs, the people back home are enjoying as many luxuries as possible.

I achieved a domination victory in 1355. I attacked Persia early before it could attack me. However, that was the only time during the game that I concentrated everything on producing military units. I saw it as necessary in order to survive against a more powerful opponent. As it turned out, Persia was not that powerful, but I am happy I did not underestimate them.

I then kept 2 cores producing as much research and production as possible. I didn't pay too much attention to the outlying cities or captured cities. Usually I just expanded their borders with a Temple and then used them to build units, workers or cannon/artillery.

I thought the really unique thing about this game was the lack of Iron and Horses while on a small continent against an aggresive foe with a strong unique unit. I think that changed the entire dynamic of the game in the Ancient Age. Persia also seemed to have a tech boost. However, I was surprised that they did not put up more of a fight when I attacked them. In retrospect, it may have been because they were devoting so much production to infrastructure and Wonders and not enough to units.

The other challenging thing was to devise the attacks against the other continents over a wide ocean. GOTM 27 was good training for that task.

 

[denyd]

I don't whether I was motivated by speed of completion or personal war weariness, but I played a very non-aggessive game. My only conquests were 3 Carthaginian cities. One was settled new the ivory to the north and taken during an early AD war and the others were all that was left after a Rome-Carthage war and were taken to acquire rubber (for trade) & aluminum. I had no aluminum to begin with, but within 10 turns of taking the Carthage source, one appeared in my lands, so that aggression was unnecessary. I found that I could defend my cities with well fortified units that had artillery support and chose to live and let live (a very unusual approach in Civ).

I finish with a 20K culture victory on 1904

Culture items built:
Temple 2670 BC
Colossus 1350 BC
Library 470 BC
Great Library 610 BC
Hanging Gardens 10 BC
Colosseum 300 AD
Sistine Chapel 670 AD
Cathedral 720 AD
Coperinicus 920 AD
Bach's Cathedral 1210 AD
Newton's University 1325 AD
University 1360 AD
Theory of Evolution 1450 AD
Hoover Dam 1575 AD
Heroic Epic 1580 AD
Forbidden Palace 1610 AD
Wall Street 1625 AD
Military Academy 1635 AD
Battlefield Medicine 1710 AD
Intelligience Agency 1754 AD
United Nations 1824 AD
SETI Program 1852 AD
Research Lab 1858 AD

Once again to Ainwood, thanks for a game with so many different ways to play (and win).

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by Txurce
Another way of stating this is that, as I play, a balanced, multi-focused approach feels right... but looking back, I often wish that I had just hit my neighbors quicker, expanded to two cores asap, and then focused on infrastructure.

There are no general rules, which is one of the things that makes Civ3 so persistently fascinating. But I do think that getting to two productive cores as soon as possible during the Ancient Age is as near as you can get to a general rule ... I'm sure there would be exceptions.

In this case the second core had to be in Persia's territory as there wasn't really room for two in the north. Add the inevitable pressure from Persia when she ran out of room to expand, plus the shortage of iron on the home continent, and the showdown with Xerxes was written in the stars.

A second "general rule" might be - get control of your own island/continent. This may be genetic for an Englishman, of course , but the sea really is a potent defence in Civ3, just because the AI are so hopeless at seaborne invasions. In this game, beating Xerxes served this purpose as well.

 

[mad-bax]

1.27f - OPEN

I (like many others) thought to take this opportunity to try a 100K game since I haven't played one for a while. My approach to the game was as follows.

1. Expand to the domination limit at a rate that matched my ability to rush culture in the available space.
2. To build densely around the FP, but allow enough tiles for cities to reach size 12 including specialists.
3. To build less densely around the Palace to allow cities to grow to size 12 without specialists.
4. To adopt ICS outside the cores.
5. To build the minimum number of units required to achieve my military objectives.
6. To keep the AI backward by not trading with them.
7. To research to Banking as quickly as possible and then turn down research to allow more funds for rushing.

And this is pretty much what I did. Part of my thinking was that viewing cultural improvements in terms of their shield cost per culture point is inherently short sighted. A city with only a temple in it doesn't cost 15 shields per culture point/turn IMO. It costs 2 food and 60 shields for 2cpt. Even this is not particularly relevant, because it is not the culture RATE that is important, but the total accumulated culture at the end of the game generated by the improvement. So obviously the earlier you build the improvement the more culture it will generate, and conversely, the earler you finish, the less culture it will generate. As further cultural improvements are added to a town so the "overhead" of the cost of the settler becomes proportionally less significant. Then there are colloseums. 120 shields to build and on the face of it, the least attractive investment. With economics, you can build 120 shields worth of units and disband them in a new town for 30 shields for a temple. Because of the additional cost of the settler, I believe it is better to just build the colloseum. For this reason I built colloseums without rushing and did not build units for disbanding purposes until the city had a colloseum.

I reached the domination limit in 1210AD. I was in a position to get to domination sometime before 800AD in fact, but that would have required expansion at a rate that would have exceeded my ability to backfill. In other words, the rate at which I could add culture to my empire would have been reduced. So instead of this I periodically turned off military expansion so that the need to rush settlers and build workers didn't cripple my ability to rush culture.

At this point only the Greeks and Ottomans had viable positions and I controlled nearly all luxes, although the Ottomans had gems and the Greeks had incense and dyes (I think). Since I was not trading, they were hurting. They couldn't self research as their lux sliders must have been way up. I imagined that this would persist until the end of the game. I didn't want to take out any of the bordering civs since their cultural borders prevented my own borders expanding past the domination limit and I could therefore support more cities.

Unfortunately, the lack of luxes and the absence of anything to offer me in a trade forced Alexander into demanding wines. I nearly caved, but in the end didn't, and it was war <sigh>. I gave the Ottomans some tech for an MA and signed all the other civs against him too for little sweetners of varying kinds. From here a red mist descended and I abandoned my plans and decided to take out all of the remaining civs, which I did. This meant that I built far more military than I intended, and even rushed a couple of rifles here and there. The upshot of this is that I put a couple of thousand shields into military that would have otherwise gone into culture, and cities that should have been on wealth were building units for 15 unnecessary turns. Also, because my cultural borders expanded (a lot) when I took out the neighbouring towns I had to abandon at least 8 towns, all with 8cpt in them.

All this probably cost 3 - 5 turns on the finish date. But this is not why my result is so poor. The main reasons for the late date was researching wheel instead of Poytheism, and not realising that there was a safe sea route to Carthage. I was really kicking myself at this point, and was quite disheartened.

So, from around 1450AD I was alone in the world except for one Greek city on an island. Turns were still taking an age, finding native workers, shipping slaves back and forth, irrigating cities to allow them to cap out expansion etc. On the last turn I could have won by domination, conquest or 100K. I did toy with the idea of milking to a Space and diplo multi win by keeping the Carthaginians alive, but I really didn't have time. If I had left the 20K option open I may have made the effort.

Final result: 100K win in 1580AD with a Firaxis score of 5501. Sounds about right for Monarch.

BTW: does anyone think there were any seafaring civs in the game? I do. I think that Carthage and the vikings were seafaring, and this is how I think that contacts and the order in which contacts were made was deliberately designed into the game. I also think that the production costs for some civs were altered. When I established an embassy with the Ottomans I'm sure I saw that the shields bin was spaced like a deity game. I'm not sure about this though.

Here is a summary of the end.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Your approach to the game will definitely effect how quickly you expand.

I would fit into the "balanced" approach too. I had a strong core with several wonders, I felt I was able to research well for the first part of the MA. With a decently strong military I hoped to deter X-man from a sneak attack. I also had a bit of fear concerning the Immortals and I wanted to strike with overwhelming force. I did not want to get into a war of attrition with Persia.

 

[Sabre]

It really didn't occur to me not to attack Persia early. My top concerns were defense and the second core and the only solution to that was to take out Persia ASAP, even if it meant sending thousands of archers to their deaths. The quicker I can get a second core set up, the better my game will go in most cases. I also really don't like having an aggressive civ next to me and when there are no other land neighbors all the better to get rid of Persia and live in relative safety. I can then concentrate on whatever victory I'm trying to accomplish.

The only real concern was tech, as at the time Persia was my only contact and doing all the research myself would put me hopelessly behind. Getting that early leader to rush the Great Library cinched the deal. The only glich in my plan was the slowness that the other civs moved up the tree and I experienced a delay in getting to Chivalry.

As for the industrial age question, it may not seem to apply to me as I had most of the world by the time I reached that point but that was mostly because I took my time in researching, particularly the 2nd half of the AA and the beginning of the MA. I could have gotten that far faster, but my organizational skills in directing naval invasions aren't very good. Better than the AI though. I also could have started my invasions earlier. In hindsight, I could have started my Greece invasion before finishing Rome/Carthage and could have started on the Kelts at nearly the same time as Greece/Ottomans/Germany were much easier than I anticipated.

Another factor was government. I was really late in getting Monarchy and Republic with my GLibrary research. Upgrading my govt earlier would have given my elephant production a push. I think I was still in despotism up until about the time I finished Rome/Carthage.

On a side note, has anyone else gone the Conquest route? I see lots of culture and domination but don't recall any conquests. Why has conquest been shunned? I chose it on a whim in my quest to get wins in all categories, so there was really no strategic reason for my choosing this path.

 

[AlanH]

Mac Civ 1.29 Open

I wanted a fast game, so I didn't like the idea of having to close down all the little islands. Also I could leave Greece alone and stil reach domination. They were quite close on my heels in techs, and could well have reached Rifles by the time I could tackle them. They would have required significant extra troops that I didn't have to produce and ship. I also left Hammurabi weeping in a croft on a single tile island in the Outer Hebrides, and I would have needed marines to dispose of him. I didn't even need to kill neoCarthage - she was my tech trade partner for most of the game.
I have a soft spot for Hannibaline, you see

 

[Peanut]

Originally posted by denyd
I finish with a 20K culture victory on 1904

Well done denyd. Pretty well an identical twin to my 20K in 1902 !

So, select your quotation :

Great Minds Think Alike ! ... or ... Fools Seldom Differ !

Um, on second thoughts, given your illustrious record, perhaps a finish on par with this Amateur Arachide is best left unmentioned.

Oops sorry ...

PS What did you find most effective in keeping our grumpy and irrational neighbour happy ? I never settled where one of my cities would compete with one of his 21 city squares (well almost never), I kept a reasonable defence force, I always had an ROP going, I always traded spare luxs with him and I regularly sold / traded him technology. He only went crazy and attacked once, late in the game, which must have meant it needed an extreme RNG throw for him to make that choice. I guess that's why it took him so long.

 

[Caesar of Rome]

Did any one post a look out on that southern saltpetre mountain in the sea? I can't imagine it came within cultural borders for any one. I must admit i never even landed. Would a lookout have merely slowed the turns or been of strategic value?

 

[AlanH]

To do what? No one could build a city there, so no one could build a harbour or airport to connect it to their other cities, or build any units on the spot. It was probably there purely to make up the distribution of saltpeter on the map and deprive us of a source.

 

[mad-bax]

Playing a religious civ was a factor for choosing 100K for me, as was the difficulty level. Had I known early enough that there was so much water on the map then I may have gone for conquest. But as Alan says its a PItA taking out all the islands once you have got to the domination limit, and relieving the encumbent of its one tile city could also be a problem. I also think that moving map trading and communications trading to later in the game tends to make conquest slightly more difficult. Generally though I think that the map layout made domination an easier prospect logistically and it would be quicker to achieve just in terms of hours at the keyboard.

 

[Ronald]

PTW 1.27f, OPEN

I did not have much time this month, so this is one spoiler for all ages.

1) Ancient expansion
Soon I discovered that I was alone on a medium sized continent with Persia as my neighbours, who had control of the only available iron source. So I started to plan an invasion of the Persian territory with a combination of archers and spearmen.
As soon as I had researched mapmaking, I started to send galleys out to explore the world.
In 650 BC I made my first contact with another civ.

2) The Persian war
In 350 BC I had assembled an army large enough to conquer the iron source. Persia hooked up this iron just a few turns earlier, so I hoped that I will encounter only a limited number of immortals. The planning was, that I will get as quickly as possible to the iron with my first wave containing archers and spearmen, connect it to my empire, upgrade my warriors to swordsmen and destroy Persia with them.
This plan worked very well and by 190 AD Persia was destroyed, which gave me the pyramids in Persepolis, and the continent was mine.
In the meantime I continued to explore the world and in the year 110 AD I knew all civs on the map.

3) The invasion of the Carthago - Rome homeland
There was some unsettled land between Carthago and Rome and via the safe crossing I brought two settlers and some enforcement over (300 AD).
All the civs were quite backwards, so I had to do all my research by myself (interestingly noone researched literature untill 350 AD, I had a place prebuild for the great library, but did not want to reasearch literature because I wanted to get to chivalry as soon as possible. Finally Greece, the powerhouse on the large continent researched it, I could buy it for 170g and had next turn the GL.
In 570 I researched invention, upgraded my archers to longbowmen and together with about 10 war elephants I had a big enough army to start the war against Carthago. This was quite short and in 670 AD Carthago was destroyed and Rome became the next target. Rome fell in 750 AD and my empire was now across two continents.

4) The invasion of the large continent
Unfortunately, the lighthouse was built by the Scandinavians and not reachable via a safe passage. So I had to delay my next invasion for some while. I researched towards military tradition at max speed, just before getting MT, I had to research education and astronomy to reach safely the far land. My core towns were producing one war elephant after the other and when I finally could upgrade them to cavalry, I had an army of 40 cavalry and 10 musketmen. With this massive army, the final invasion went very quickly:
It started in 950 AD, by 1000 AD, the core German cities were gone, by 1080 AD half of Greece was mine, by 1120 AD whole Greece, by 1150 AD half of Babylon.

Finally in 1170 AD I got the message that India dominates the world with 5911 Firaxis points. A very enjoyable game! Thanks Ainwood, I hope your next maps are equally interesting.

 

[denyd]

Oh brave little Indian Peanut, I’m afraid there was nothing I could do to keep the X-man from his aggressive ways. I was brutally attacked on three different occasions, once during each of the first three ages. My bombardiers (catapults/cannons/artillery) wounded the nearby invaders and my brave defenders (spearmen/muskets/infantry) repelled wave after wave of the teal menace from the safety of our fortress-city in Mutton Valley. I was finally able to begin building a mobile assault stack (20+ tanks) to station in the mountains of my lands within reach of his cities. At that point Xerxes found enlightenment (or realized he had no oil) and stopped coveting my lands. As for trading with the madman, his technology prices were beyond reason and he never had resources available that I needed. I preferred to trade my excess goods to Rome & Carthage. I found that Xerxes without luxuries, had to maintain a lower research level to keep his people from rioting. A slow tech pace for the AI is a must when aiming for a culture victory.

 

[Megalou]

Peanut,
When you say that you didn't infringe on his 21 city radii, I assume that you didn't claim any of the lamb luxuries. So if you traded lamb FROM the X-ruffian, isn't it safe to assume that this trade kept him calm? In tough games on sid or deity I often trade my luxuries for one of the AIs excess luxuries even if I actually only have a single source myself. I have yet to win a sid game, but I'm pretty confident that this no-gain tactic works to make strong AI civs declare war on someone else. Compared to sid, GOTM28s Persia is the peanut

 

[Peanut]

Magalou - Yes I think so.

I only had 4-5 cities for most of the game. I never reached Mutton Valley (until our late era skirmish). The only overlap between our cities was when X-man settled on the NE coast next door to Delhi & Bombay. It flipped around 1000AD (I think).

I only had the two luxuries for most of the game- Ivory and whichever one was in the forest NNE of Delhi.

So, having lux trades with X-man, an embassy, an ROP at whhatever cost, gpt tech sales, no overlap, map gifts when possible, etc. must have boosted the threshhold probability for his war/peace decision. And maybe I had a bit of luck with the RNG as well.

It felt a bit like keeping a tiger on a short leash. Keep it fed and happy, and maybe it won't feel like turning around and biting your leg off. Oh, and keep the biggest stick you can carry in the other hand just in case, and hope it's big enough !

 

[Txurce]

Originally posted by mad-bax
1.27f - OPEN

I (like many others) thought to take this opportunity to try a 100K game since I haven't played one for a while. My approach to the game was as follows.

1. Expand to the domination limit at a rate that matched my ability to rush culture in the available space.
2. To build densely around the FP, but allow enough tiles for cities to reach size 12 including specialists.
3. To build less densely around the Palace to allow cities to grow to size 12 without specialists.
4. To adopt ICS outside the cores.
5. To build the minimum number of units required to achieve my military objectives.
6. To keep the AI backward by not trading with them.
7. To research to Banking as quickly as possible and then turn down research to allow more funds for rushing.

mad-bax, there weren't that many players who chose 100k over 20k, but I was one of them, and you blew my doors off (a 13-turn difference). I've compared our games, and will start with two quick observations:

1. You expanded somewhat faster than me, but this didn't get you more gold, or faster research, because -
2. I researched faster than you, entering the IA in 850 vs 1210, and maintaining a 4-turn pace through that era.

So I looked at your very helpful approach list at the top of your post, and gave each some thought.

1. I expanded to the domination limit at a rate that somewhat exceeded my ability to rush culture in the available space - but don't see how this hurts, as I didn't require excess units to do so. (You elaborate on this in your post - could you make it more clear for me?)
2, 3. I built slightly more densely around the FP than the palace, and most of my cities could reach size 12 - and again, my economy was cranking out the gold for research without any problem.
4. I adopted ICS outside the cores, but not as much as you. However, I didn't need more cities than I had, as I had somewhere to spend my gold rushing culture every turn.
5. I also built the minimum number of units required to achieve my military objectives.
6. I kept the AI fairly backward, but for no particular reason - I don't see how their staying even would cost me anything except the odd medieval wonder, and those don't make a meaningful impact on your score.
7. I also researched to Banking as quickly as possible - but then, unlike you, did not turn down research to allow more funds for rushing. Instead I kept research at the max until I researched miniaturization for the Internet wonder. Ah ha! I'm guessing that you won the game before ever building that wonder, and getting all of its free research labs. (I recall that SirPleb did the same thing in the recent Persian Tournament game.) I wonder if your starting to rush culture in earnest as early as banking made the difference? (This is my third 100k game ever, and assumed that going for the Internet wonder was automatic.)

 

[mad-bax]

Txurce: I think the main difference between our games is probably exactly as you state. From banking to MT I was researching at around 8 turns per tech, and I researched steam at 10% or 17 turns. From there I researched nationalism and electricity with a single scientist. I finished the game 1 turn into RP. If you just think about the number of beakers required to get to the internet from steam it's easy to see that had that gold gone into rushing culture you would have finished before me quite comfortably.

I'm not even sure whether it was worth researching to steam. If I had been brave I could have switched to single scientist after banking and rushed quicker as a result, then start trading with the AI at second and third civ rates to get MT eventually. I felt comfortable with a big tech lead for the obvious reason that cavalry vs pikes is cheaper than elephants vs rifles.

As for wonders, the only ones I pre-built were sistines and Smiths. None of the others were at all important to me since they are very expensive culture. A total of 5 leaders moved my palace, built Leos and Magellans and two armies.

Edit: The thing about not expanding faster than my ability to rush culture is something that I'm not sure is right. But my thinking was as follows. From a purely rushing point of view it costs 210 shields and 2 food to get a town set up with 8cpt. Therefore rushing unis and Colloseums is a since a uni is 200 shields for 4cpt. Therefore whilst I had cathederals and libraries to build it was not a good idea to continue militarily since building banks and harbours in the core would help improve my ability to rush more than building units to continue an offensive. Also you need to rush settlers which is equivalent to a temple and 2 food.

So... once a civ was dead, to continue expansion would require more military (for me) since the new civ would be tooled up. The question was then do I start to build units earlier to be ready to continue military expansion or did I have enough towns needing cathederals and libraries, allowing me to build banks and harbours in my core instead.

I know this is convoluted, but my mind works in strange ways and is almost certainly flawed. I don't think I did what I intended to very well anyway and I'll probably give it another shot soon.

 

[gozpel]

Just another note regarding Txurce's question from before:

Persia sneak-attacked me twice and demanded once and when I said no, he attacked and took a town. Even with fortified spears and archers on mountains, he just sliced through my defense (which properly was my intended offense force) but somehow he knew. In one turn he took out 4 spears and 5 archers and only lost one immortal himself.

"Luckily" I had another 20-25 archers/spears closeby, so I could keep him off my tail.

I tried twice to build up early archer/spear groups to take the 2 cities S of Mutton Valley, but he declined me that joy by attacking first Very clever Xerxes!

I finally got him with Jumbos and the rest of the game was a cruise. The factor that set me in the slow lane was my 20k goal. Bombay would easily contributed to an efficient early army if I had chosen so.

 

[Megalou]

gozpäl,
Perhaps it's better not to spread out the defenders. The enemy footmen are bound to attack something, and if it's a heap of spearmen, those who get injured will have a good chance to heal. This is unless you lost control of mutton valley completely, in which case you're in trouble. When the Persians attacked me they didn't even reach the bonus tiles in mutton valley, let alone my mutton valley town.

I can tell you about the opposite of your 4 dead spearmen. I left a War Elephant on open grassland just after taking the first lamb town. It was redlined or yellow. One immortal attacked it and it fled into the mountains. Then another 3 immortals attacked it and they were all killed. I'll think about that the next time I blame the RNG.

 

[Txurce]

Originally posted by mad-bax
The thing about not expanding faster than my ability to rush culture is something that I'm not sure is right. But my thinking was as follows. From a purely rushing point of view it costs 210 shields and 2 food to get a town set up with 8cpt. Therefore rushing unis and Colloseums is a since a uni is 200 shields for 4cpt. Therefore whilst I had cathederals and libraries to build it was not a good idea to continue militarily since building banks and harbours in the core would help improve my ability to rush more than building units to continue an offensive. Also you need to rush settlers which is equivalent to a temple and 2 food.

I don't think I did what I intended to very well anyway and I'll probably give it another shot soon.

Well, from my relatively lowly vantage point, I was impressed by your game, and more importantly, your analysis of it should significantly help mine (we'll find out in GOTM29).

Your comparison of rushing cathedrals and libraries versus unis and colosseums is sinking in. I rushed all of them in corrupt towns; you're saying that we're better off building a settler and starting a new town (rushing temples, cathedrals and libraries), rather than continuing on to unis and colosseums in already-established towns. Putting it differently, in theory you would expand to the domination limit, and then fill in the map with cities containing temples, libraries and cathedrals, before you would rush your first uni outside a core.

A related question: if we were playing with a scientific civ, we'd focus on rushing libraries and unis, presumably. Now, what if playing a civ with no culture-purchasing advantages?

With regard to expansion, I kept pushing out because it led to a higher score, prebuilt cities, and territory with the potential to build more cities. From that perspective, I didn't see how I could hurt myself, as long as I didn't overspend on units.

Less importantly, I now see why you think it's worth slowing down the AI tech pace - it's becauae you'll be stopping yours cold very early on (after banking). I would probably choose to live dangerously, if it gained me more gold in trade, with the variable being how important it is for me to reach military tradition.