GOTM 30 Final Spoiler III: Modern Age / End Game Submitted

[grahamiam]

Originally posted by smackster
I think maybe on this map, and at Monarch level they just can't research them quick enough, so you have to do it yourself.

I'm a little bleary-eyed this morning due to playing this into the wee hours last night. Got a space win in 1725AD with a Firaxis score around 6400's. I'll try to post a more detailed summary later tonight.

Regarding your comment, smackster, I was able to get 1 Modern Age tech (Computers) but I had to gift the Persian into the MA all the way from Electricity and The Corporation From this position, you'd think the AI would go after Fission for a diplomatic win. However, X-man decided that Espionage was more worthwhile

edit: too late tonight, will try again tomorrow
edit2: or maybe tomorrow's tomorrow

 

[dojoboy]

Originally posted by grahamiam

Regarding your comment, smackster, I was able to get 1 Modern Age tech (Computers) but I had to gift the Persian into the MA all the way from Electricity and The Corporation

Am I slowing down my tech advancement by not doing this same thing?

 

[grahamiam]

Originally posted by dojoboy
Am I slowing down my tech advancement by not doing this same thing?

perhaps, but not by much. i was timing the ToE build to get 2 Modern Age tech advances, so I gifted the Persians into the Modern Age as soon as I learned Radio and was 1T from finishing ToE. This allowed me to pick and choose which tech's to get from ToE and avoid the one the persians got. Reduced my game by 4T's so it wasn't a big deal in this game. If there were 2 scientific civ's, then it would have perhaps saved 8T, provided they both didn't get the same thing.

 

[dshea_32665]

Open Mac 1.29

This is my first GOTM submission so I didn't really take any notes. I achieved a space ship win in 1974 AD with 2983 Firaxis points. I loved the map. It is the first time I have played an island map and it was a lot of fun. Having no oil in the industrial age was a little surprising but that was a fun challenge.

No summaries here butjust wanted to say thanks to everyone for the things I have learned by trying the past two GOTM and comparing notes. I didn't restart this game so I can submit this one.

 

[AlanH]

Welcome to the club , and a particular welcome to a new Mac kid on the block. And a win as your first submission as well! Congratulations.

 

[denyd]

Well, I finally found the time to finish.

A combination of lack of resources (no oil or uranium), made the decision of UN vs Space an easy one.

In 1782 via a 5-1 (2 abstain) vote I won a diplomatic victory. scoring 3122 Firaxis points.

Actually a very calm game, with early expansion on my island and the east & west islands, lots of trading in the middle ages and the TOE slingshot to the tech lead and a UN prebuild made it all possible.

Only a fake war (killed 3 warriors) in the 300AD range initerrupted the peace until America declared (again) in 1750 AD and dragged England in against me. By then my bank account was such that all of the others soon were at war with America & England. I had taken 3-4 English cites using artillery & cavalry vs Infantry and probably could have continued a city by city conquest of England had the game continued. The lack of oil and not wanting to move 40 artillery & 30 cavalry to another island with 6 Galleons, meant that a peaceful win was the best plan and when the resource shortage was revealed, diplomacy became the best option.

Thanks to the staff for a very enjoyable game and I'm looking forward to GOTM XXXI & SGOTM II

 

[Q'el Chamyaar]

My second GoTM. And a lot different from last months. Like others have mentioned I suffered from a lack of oil and since I had set myself the task of getting to the end with out a hostile act (and complete neutrality) my only chance to gain some oil was through cultural hegemony. That failed when my frontier city flipped, something I found odd, as although the culture it flipped to had marginally more culture in their nearby city - my own cities were closer and far stronger culturally.

The game proceeded peacefully with the Spanish launching their spaceship in 1834AD. Only six cities changed hands during the whole game, 3 flipping to me, one of mine flipping away and two others. I suspect the other two were culture flips also, meaning there was not one hostile act in the whole game (there were no wars mentioned in the tape at the end - do declarations of war appear there?).

This was my first attempt at serious tech diplomacy, it seemed to go pretty well. Is there a similar technique to resource diplomacy? I tried controlling technologies with civilisations aiming gain a trade for the resources when they became available. It didn't seem to work.

My respect goes to those that undertook conquest and dominations strategies. The logistics of moving around all those units (without railroads) is impressive.

I liked the spiced islands too.

Thanks for an enjoyable game. Looking forward to #31.

 

[julia]

my sumary will be a short one, because i havent finished yet, and thus will not be able to submit. too much work in reallife that had to be done...

i continued to settle peacefully during MA. i settled one spice city, one gems city and one city with wines, supplying me with the luxury i needed for republic. as soon as democracy was researchen (by me) i switched. as salpeter showed i also settled two towns on an island that had 2 salpeters (middle left of the minimap), pumping them with culture and denying these resources to the others.

the GL was gifting me with techs. after it expired korea (replacing persia in my game) was ahead one tech most of the time. i managed to catch up and hold my position in the late MA. since then i am long gone...

in mid IA some worldwars were fought, because i had no rubber and thought i needed it. i signed MPP with america and china, and attacked the scandinavians. that war ended, but then i had to fight anothe one for oil, which i did not want to play without. its currently something about 1550 AD, and tokugawe are almost done. my cultural calculator (thanx to Tone for the link!) tells me that 20k victory will be around 1900AD, so i have some time to go. but with everybody well behind in tech now, and a worldwar holding them off research it should be possible before someone builds the spaceship. if not i will conquer their uranium and alluminium resources...

here is a screenshot of 660AD, where most colonies (except for the salpeter-denying ones) have been setteled:

culture buildings in Madrid:
Temple 2550 BC
Library 390 BC
Colosseum 210 AD
Cathedral 660 AD
University 690 AD

Great Library 490 BC
Great Wall 150 AD
Hanging Gardens 370 AD
Sistine Chapel 650 AD
Newton's University 1100 AD
Shakespeare's Theatre 960 AD
Universal Suffrage 1330 AD
Theory of Evolution 1400 AD

and, besides, barcelona is not bad as well, having the GL, leonardos, smiths, magelans. building hoover in toledo. i failed on copernicus, becuase AI was so slow building sunzus that when they cascaded from there.


thanx to GOTM team for a wonderfull set up game, hope to send in next time, maybe...

 

[smackster]

Originally posted by grahamiam
I'm a little bleary-eyed this morning due to playing this into the wee hours last night. Got a space win in 1725AD with a Firaxis score around 6400's. I'll try to post a more detailed summary later tonight.

Regarding your comment, smackster, I was able to get 1 Modern Age tech (Computers) but I had to gift the Persian into the MA all the way from Electricity and The Corporation From this position, you'd think the AI would go after Fission for a diplomatic win. However, X-man decided that Espionage was more worthwhile

edit: too late tonight, will try again tomorrow

Well done on beating me to the space win. I was holding out TOE until the Modern Age but Toku researched and then started building it and was too close so I had to complete it at the end of the IA. I too gifted all the AI into the Modern age, but they still did not research anything. I wish I could go back and find out what they were doing.

I don't think individually these things make that much difference but put them all together and they can give you a lot of turns.

Smackster

 

[Dianthus]

Well, I've finished, and with more time to spare than I thought! I got a cultural win in 1758AD, beating the 20K best date by 1 turn. Unfortunately my win was a 100K cultural .

I was intending to go for 100K right from the start as I've never won a GOTM via 100K. I knew I wasn't going to have much time this month, so I decided to play peaceful in an attempt to try and keep the turn time down. This didn't really work. I've seen others mention that the AI's were passive during this game, but I was attacked several times! :

150BC : Celts attacked. I made an alliance with England and just killed any Celts that dared to land. Make peace in 340AD.
430AD : America attacked a city on one of the islands near them. They had 2 cities there and I also had 2. They only attacked with archers initially, then got "nasty" and attacked with Longbows. These were obviously pretty easy to take care of on the turn they landed, so there was no real threat. I took their 2 island cities, then I just defended until 890AD.
640AD : England attacked. This was just 3 turns after Newcastle culture flipped to us. Coincidence? This time I decided to retaliate. I fought with Knights, completing their annihilation in 860AD.
1305AD : Celts attacked again. I decided to take them out as well. This time I had Cavalry, but it took a while as the Celts had spread out a fair way from their homeland. Finished with them in 1440AD.
1560AD : Persians landed next to one of my cities. I made a quick mutual protection pact with all of the remaining AIs, and actually made money from the pacts! Sure enough Persia attacked, and ended up fighting all of the other AIs .

I didn't start a single war or break a single deal the whole game! The AI's were no-where near me in culture, and we were still in the Industrial Ages in 1758AD. I completed Atomic Theory in 1752AD using single scientist research. I just missed getting it first by 3 turns, so the AIs were quite a way from UN/Space victory. Here's my culture :

I think I did fairly well taking into account my slow expansion due to "trying" to be peaceful. My biggest mistake was probably in the placement of my Forbidden Palace.

Last month I noticed an "interesting" way of placing the Forbidden Palace near the Palace :

The Red city is the Palace, the Green the Forbidden Palace. What's interesting about this is that virtually all of the cities are closer to the Forbidden Palace than to the Palace, everything below the green line.

This month I experimented with doing it the other way around (OK, I messed up ) :

Again, the Red city is the Palace, the Green the Forbidden Palace. (Note that I've swapped the E/W halves of this minimap so that the Palace is near the centre). This time everything above the green line is closer to the Forbidden Palace, which isn't much! I haven't investigated this at all, but I suspect it contributed to the high corruption I experienced this month.

 

[LeSphinx]

PTW 12.7 OPEN CLASS

I've finish my GOTM30 a week ago.
I focused on military army and built the best offensive units each era (Swordman and Knight then Cavalery).
I expand quickly in the fist island and on the 2 northest island : North West and North Est.

Then I make war to England and I build the Forbiden Palace in the English Island.

Then I finish to expand south and started to create a lot of ship in order to invade Est!

Finaly I win by a domination win in 1595 AD with a civ3 score of 4687. (~6760 Jason score)

In the future I will manage to expand more quickly and attack more quickly the other civs.

LeSphinx

 

[civ_steve]

1.21f

Spoiler1 Report

I'm skipping the 2nd spoiler this month. Entered Middle Ages in 320 AD after completeing the Great Library.

I'd already driven England down to 1 lonely city at the SW tip of her island. I'd taken 9 of 11 towns of civ#2, which I can now reveal as the .... Vikings!! Needless to say, they were gone by about 400 AD.

I'd established Logrono on the English Island to be my eventual palace. I'd gotten no GLs in either campaign (English or Viking), so I was setting up a Palace Jump. I completed the FP around 270 AD in Salamanca (closest city to Madrid), traded for Republic from America in 370 AD (them declared war to get out of high gpt payment) and jumped the palace in 390 AD. Started a Revolution. So I had a new palace and new government in 400 AD.

I built up quite a Navy in this game, and used lots of Swordsmen, and then MedInf. The combination, along with the Islands terrain, provided for very fast capture of enemy cities. The only significant disadvantage vs using Knights was the lack of a retreat capability and the capture of the occasional interior city.

Anyway, America and Korea (no Xman here!) were the leading researchers; I wanted to slow them down. So after a couple hundred years of taking over the 3 islands between me and Abe, then upgrading Swords to MedInf, I finally invaded America proper in 690 AD. I used 9 Galleys to land 16 Medinf, 1 archer and 1 Settler. Chicago fell the next turn, Washington the turn after. They had Spearmen defending!! (Should learn to check what resources they have; I probably could have attacked him 100 years earlier with Swordsmen and done pretty good!) They get Gunpowder during the campaign, and I face a total of 2 Muskets. Complete conquest of American continent in 840 AD, and gain 2 out of 6 remote cities in peace negotiations. America will not be a factor from here out.

I had been developing Barcelona as a possible 20K city. They had all the cultural buildings so far, along with GLight and GLib. I missed Hanging Gardens by 2 turns, so changed to Palace, then to Sistine's when available. Finally set of golden age when Sistine's completes in 730 AD. At that time I decide I need to research Chivalry, so go maximum and complete in 770. A GL generated by an Elite Sword in a far off side battle against the Koreans returns, and rushes Leo's, just in time for a mass upgrade of Horsemen to Knights (22) in 770 AD. These start heading for the Celtic lands.

Declare on Celts in 820 AD, landing Knights on Northern edge of continent. Tokugawa demand Gunpowder, I decline, and they declare war in 830 AD (same turn that an island city of their flips to me; I've wondered if the AI gets real aggresive right about the time a city is going to flip). Last original Celtic city on their first continent falls to me in 930 AD, and last Celtic city taken period in 960 AD. They join the Vikings.

I land 2 forces, 1 from America and 1 from the Viking continent, on Tokugawa's home continent in 890 AD. American force of MedInf's is unsuccessful and survivor (yup, only 1) is withdrawn. Combined MedInfs and a few Knights takes Yokkaichi, so I have a tenuous beachhead on the Tokugawa homeland. I face the occasional Samurai, which cause some problems. Finally, in 1040 AD, I pause after taking 3 more cities. The last city, Lida, a hill city in the North part of the continent, had only a 1 hp damaged Samurai survive my first assault in 1030 Ad. He fully heals to be a 5 hp Elite Samurai the next turn, and kills 6 Knights before he goes down! 1 lousy hp. This forces me to sign peace while I regroup (there really isn't any peace in this game; just pauses between Wars!!

At this point I decide to go for Conquest, while building up my 20K city. There are 3 one tile island cities. How to get their owners to give them up? Maybe by making them less valuable, they might do that. Only bombardment unit I have is the Galleass (and only as an added unit), so I start mass production of them! They start rushing down to the 3 cities in the Barbarian zone. I'd never built a Galleass before. Two cool things I learned: they get multiple bombardments, one for each movement; combine that with a firing rate of 3 and they can do some serious damage!! And, they have lethal bombardment against Galleys and Caravels! Those Barb galleys usually disappered with one bombardment! A bad point - man are they slow!!

Anyway, my Celtic Knights loaded up for Korea. They land in 1010 AD. An empty army is with them, and loads up with Knights, giving me my first army victory. Side battles with England eliminate them in 1050 AD. In 1060 AD, the entire Korean continent is mine!! I move mass amounts of Knight to the remaining Korean island (3 cities); they look very intimidating. I start a campaign to eradicated the remaining American cities. In 1100 AD Galleasses start bombading the hell out of Qitaiquon, Korea's only one tile island city. What do you know? They give it up in 1120 AD; I'd bombarded it from size 4 to size 1, destroyed its Temple, Library and Harbor, and reduced its defenders to 1 hp. Two more Han one tile islands left!! (I've been dropping off units on other one tile island spaces to prevent their use.)

Americans join Vikings, English and Celts in 1120 also. 1130 AD is declaration against Han; by 1230 AD I've taken their continent and several remote cities, but they'll only give up one of their island cities, Xinjian. Xinjian has culture and is closer to their continent, but they'll give it up but not Anyang. Fine, sign peace and stand down, for now.

1240 AD, declare on Tokugawa after Lida flips back to them. I've built up 26 Knights and take cities fairly quickly. Have taken their continent and start bombardments and landings on island to North West of their continent, when I realize there's another one tile island city that the Tokugawa have!! Yikes, sign peace and get it in 1285 AD.

1290 AD, redeclare on Koreans, they are gone in 1295 AD. (5 down and 2 to go)

1330 AD, have ramped up reseach quite a bit; starting to build Libraries and Universities; enter Industrial Age by trading Physics to Tokugawa for Metallurgy.

1340 AD, redeclare against Han (trying to meet 20 turn peace deals as they are made in hopes of getting last one tile city; didn't want to do too much damage against my reputation). I redeclare against the Tokugawa in 1380 AD. 1395 AD, Han down to Capital city (on Jungly island) and Anyang, which they still wont give up. 1410 AD, last Tokugawa city is taken. Six civs down, and the Han have only two cities, but it looks like Anyang will need Marines to take.

Sooo, I do a lot of research, get AmphibWarfare in 1585, rush marines, and Anyang and the Han Capital fall, giving me a Conquest Victory in 1600 AD, 6521 Firaxis score, and a bit over 8000 for Jason. (My 20K city hadn't quite reached 10000 by this time, even with all available cultural buildings,2 Ancient, 6 Middle Age, 1 Industrial wonder, and Heroic Epic.)

Anyang seemed very valuable to the Han. It is a Hills island, but Tokugawa, with only 4 cities left, gave up a Hills one tile island. Perhaps it holds Uranium. The replay showed that Anyang wasn't founded until about 500 AD. In retrospect, I should have thought a bit more about stashing units on these one tile islands sooner. (Edit- Taking a closer look, Anyang had Incense on it. Probably why the Han would not give it up, even though the Incense had no real value to him.)

Really enjoyed this game! While I eventually went to Knights as my main attack units (and no one ever learned MilTrad, so no Cavalry), the island topology and lots of Galleys really extended the use of Swords and MedInf as offensive units. It was a lot of fun swooping down on civ after civ!

 

[grahamiam]

Open, PTW 1.27f, Space win 1725AD, 6440 Firaxis

Well, this game was definitely fun! Nicely done again, Ainwood After a few domination wins under my belt, with the last one before my goal of 1000AD, I really didn't have much of a direction to this one. Decided to play it by ear and be flexible.

Early expansion
This stage went rather well. Moved the worker S and spotted the cow. The settler then settled SE on the water and I was off! Built 3 warriors then did a temple prebuild for granery. Pottery was the 1st tech researched and I did it @ 100%. Learned it in 3100BC but muffed the prebuild, getting the granery in 2850BC. 1st couple settlers were on 5T as I was waiting for the terrain improvements to finish. Finally got up and running @ 4T in 1950BC. By 1000BC, I had 10 cities on 2 landmasses, 2 settlers, 7 workers, 11 warriors, 2 galleys, 5 temples and 1 barracks. MM came in on 1150BC since it seemed such a high priority due to the island we were on.

I was also able to build the Great Lighthouse in 370BC, enabling 1 extra movement for the galleys that proved invaluable. By 670BC, I had learned CoL and Philosophy so I started a 40T research gambit on Republic. In retrospect, I should have researched at max. but the extra gold did allow me to buy the rest of the AA techs. I didn't revolt till 300AD, till after my 1st war with England was done, since I felt that the 1 or 2 lux resourses that I had were not enought to combat WW.

beginning of the wars
I started a fight with the English in 90BC, exhorting 7g and then declaring anyways, using 16swords + more to follow to rain on her parade. I did not have a good idea of her landmass due to poor scouting so I ended up going down the east side of her island and then back up. War ended in 290AD with her mainland completely captured. She was left with a couple of cities on the SE island.

Last AA tech, Poly, was researched in 310AD. This was were I got really lucky. At this time, with the English war over, I had decided to take on the Vikings due to thier wines and other lux. As the units were moving north along the east side of the English island (about 20 swords and horses by now), we had our massive barb uprising. Thanks to this, I was able to generate about 9 elites.

Next war was on the Vikings. This went rather smoothly and resulted in a GL, who was rushed back to the English mainland and rushed a FP in London in 500AD. I pushed the Vikings down to 1 city near Toku by 590BC, and by 660, Toku finished the job.

Expansions kept coming after that. The next target was Toku and they were reduced to 1 crying 1tile island city by 860AD.
After Toku, came the Celtic wars beginning in 950AD.

In 990AD, I was luckily beaten by 1T to Leonardo's by the Han. I then switched Madrid to Sistines and got it the next turn, triggering the GA. From here till the end of the game, my research rate was 4T with 1 or 2 5T techs.

In 1030AD, the Han declared war out of nowhere (they were polite and a good trading partner up to now) which proved useful. Getting thru them was a little slow due to the distances but was able to push them off thier main islands and onto the little ones in the "Barb" Triangle by 1250AD.

At this point, I was 146 tiles to domination and had 1 city on the American island thanks to the Han. I started loading up cav in that city. This was Sunday, April 24th. While doing this, I noticed that I was still keeping the 4T research rate. I was into the 1st tier techs in the IA so I decided to do something stupid and go for a space shot. It's been almost 9 months since I won this way so, what the hell!

What was keeping the research going was generous deals with the Persians and Americans as well as having Copernicus in Madrid (1000AD, GL rushed after Sistine's ) and Newtons in London (1060AD with a Palace prebuild).

Moved briskly thru the IA, getting US and Smith's but not bothering with Hoovers. As I got to the end, I timed my builds for Seti and ToE so that I could grab them just after Radio was researched. In fact, ToE came in 1T after Radio in 1535AD. So, in 1530AD, I decided to risk the game and gift the Persians into the Modern Age. I forget what tech's they had but I believe they were barely past the 1st tier IA tech's. I do know that the only techs they game me were dead end MA's as well as Nationalism and Communism. With the gifting, they drew Computers. With the ToE, I decided on Rockets and Ecology. I then traded Ecology + 2200g to Persia for Computers. In 3T, I had Seti in London.

Research in the MA continued at 4T except for Space which took 5T since I didn't have Seti yet and research labs were just coming online. Palace prebuilt the final piece of the ship in London, getting Robotics in 1725AD and switching to Stasis Chamber.

In all, a fun game. Spent almost 50hrs on it though, most of which came early this week (Sunday - Tuesday). I guess I did this to give me some recent experience in a Space win as we're going for it in SGOTM1. Getting funny looks from the wife due to all this time spent so I'll probably revert to domination next game, maybe 1st shot at preditor, though 100k may sound good as well...

My progress thru the ages (sorry for the crappy pic, I really suck at Photoshop):
In order of appearance: 1000BC, 430BC, 110AD, 430AD, 600AD (2x ), 1160AD, and 1310AD