GOTM 31 Spoiler 2: Start of Industrial Age, Full world map & all contacts

[DaveMcW]

1.27f Open

Ancient Age: 4000BC - 490BC

This was my first game with the GOTM naval rules, and it really increases the usefulness of suicide galleys. You can launch from almost anywhere and find the other continent with only 1 turn at sea. Unfortunately I lost my first successful galley to barbarians.

I met Greece during anarchy and traded Republic for Monotheism. But I wasn't able to meet Germany in time to get their tech.




Also during anarchy I captured the last Iroquois cities on the continent and got a great leader. My citizens may not be productive during anarchy, but my army certainly is!

I abandoned Paris and my palace jumped to Salamanca in 350BC, the same turn I became a Republic.




The palace jump boosted my science enough to get Engineering in 7 turns. I traded for Literature, and libraries let me get Feudalism and Invention in 5.

I used the great leader to build Leonardo's Workshop, triggering the Pyramids and Colossus to start my golden age. This put me on a 4-turn tech pace for the rest of the middle ages.

I discovered Military Tradition in 280AD and immediately launched my cavalry invasion across the narrow eastern ocean.




The 4-turn tech rate made it difficult to upgrade many horsemen, so I only had 40 cavalry at the peak of fighting. But that was enough to conquer the second continent by 610AD.




As a few people guessed, I'm going to milk the rest of the game. I discovered Magnetism in 440 AD, finally giving my citizens access to the luxuries of the other continent. In 520AD I entered the industrial age.

 

[Offa]

1.27f Open


The 4-turn tech rate made it difficult to upgrade many horsemen, so I only had 40 cavalry at the peak of fighting. But that was enough to conquer the second continent by 610AD.

As a few people guessed, I'm going to milk the rest of the game.

Well that was pretty good. A pity this is only a special guest appearance. Is the HOF to blame for this?

Apart from playing better in general, what can players like me do to approach your efforts. It appears that you concentrated entirely on research from 350bc to 300 ad or so. Is this a way forward?

 

[binyo66]

I think I made a mistake in all my games. I should have lunched cav. invation like Mad and Dave (so far I ignore the tech, and let AI do the MilTrad research). First GOTM game, and first thing I learn. I made another mistake when I lost suntzu by 8 turns (I should have mobilized since I was at war with Iroq anyway )

 

[mad-bax]

Well that was pretty good. A pity this is only a special guest appearance. Is the HOF to blame for this?

Apart from playing better in general, what can players like me do to approach your efforts. It appears that you concentrated entirely on research from 350bc to 300 ad or so. Is this a way forward?

Firstly may I echo the first part...

Secondly, I built libraries and markets in the same timeframe as Dave and managed a comfortable 4 turn research rate and still making 30+ gpt for the treasury. I starrted my invasion with around 30 units though rather than the 40 that Dave had.

I knew it was possible to get to conquest 40 turns sooner, and it's wonderful to have someone around to show you how.

 

[dojoboy]

I think I made a mistake in all my games. I should have lunched cav. invation like Mad and Dave (so far I ignore the tech, and let AI do the MilTrad research). First GOTM game, and first thing I learn. I made another mistake when I lost suntzu by 8 turns (I should have mobilized since I was at war with Iroq anyway )

I always try to research Military Tradition myself or get it through trade ASAP. I'm unsure of how the elite players approach this. Actually, many of them win w/ knights, depending on the map.

Re: mobilization. In the GOTM you can only do this in spirit (mentally) because the mobilization feature is disabled due to its tendency to make the game unbalanced.

 

[t.neo]

1.27f Open
The 4-turn tech rate made it difficult to upgrade many horsemen, so I only had 40 cavalry at the peak of fighting. But that was enough to conquer the second continent by 610AD.

I will have to join the rest in the praise.

This is my first game ever where I have succeeded in keeping a 4-5-turn tech rate during the entire game (not the beginning of course).
I'm starting to think that the commercial trait is better than the scientific for fast researching.

As soon as I realised that our continent was surrounded by Deep Ocean I decided to stay on this continent and focus on achieving space race victory.
Something I realised pretty early. This game didn't feel like emperor because of the slow expansion by the English and Iroquois.

I really looking forward to learning how fast the good players managed to achieve a space race victory. The conquest victory dates I find amazing!

 

[_Z_]

I give up

After 3 tries, I still suck. How do you guys do it. I always get involved in a war with another race, my science is always at 40 turns...If I lower I get a negative balance, barbarians are killing my settlers, even if they are escorted by 2 warriors. My units are all like chinese martial arts against guns, they never stand a chance.

Think I gonna go back to wc3 and transport tycoon

 

[ainwood]

I give up

After 3 tries, I still suck. How do you guys do it. I always get involved in a war with another race, my science is always at 40 turns...If I lower I get a negative balance, barbarians are killing my settlers, even if they are escorted by 2 warriors. My units are all like chinese martial arts against guns, they never stand a chance.

Think I gonna go back to wc3 and transport tycoon

Well, read some of the strategy articles! If your science is at 40 turns, it sounds like you don't have enough cash coming in. Do you build roads for example? Libraries? Do you trade?

 

[DogmaDog]

Dave McW, Mad-Bax, and Offa,


Your fast victories are really amazing and incomprehensible to me. Can you explain, or point me to a nuts-and-bolts explanation of how you conquer so fast?

Dave's pictures show he captures his first city on the new continent some time between 280 and 320, and in the span of 290 years goes from having 3 cities on that continent, to having the entire continent. How?

All my cities on the new continent are essentially worthless for producing things, and my skirmishes there have not gained any ground.

How do you maintain that kind of momentum?
What was your initial landing force composed of?
How many units do you use to take one city?
Do you leave any garrison in your captured cities?
What fraction of your attacking force do you lose each turn?
How do you do your resupply/follow-on forces?

You know, nuts and bolts.

I mean, geez! Dave's pics look like a disgusting pink mold growing across a hunk of camembert sitting in a musty closet. Sick! Amazing!

Thanks,
DogmaDog

 

[Mauer]

I second that motion. We need nuts. and er bolts too. I hadn't even wiped out the Iriquois and the English by the time Dave had conquered the entire map.

 

[Offa]

Not really nuts and bolts but a few points.

The difficult thing is not really the conquest itself, so much as getting into a position to allow it. I attacked with med infantry (which were a bit useless) and knights. The knights had a pretty tough time as they were facing mostly pikes and then later on muskets.

Looking back at my saves I see that my forces were very wasteful. This is good for me though as it suggests a fairly easy way to improve:

In 420ad (start of golden age when I built Leo with my 1st leader): 7 settlers, 25 workers, 16 warriors, 1 archer, 1 spearman, 3 swordsmen, 5 horse, 22 knight, 28 med inf and 25 galleys.

In 600ad (when DaveMcW had finished): 9 settlers, 27 worker, 7 warrior, 1 archer, 1 spearmen, 1 pike, 2 sword, 14 horse (disconnecting iron), 72 knight, 27 med inf, 33 galleys.

In 800ad (dom limit reached): 27 worker, 7 warrior, 1 archer, 2 spear, 2 sword, 4 pike!, 1 longbow(by mistake), 19 med inf, 82 knight, 10 galley and 23 caravel and a few captured catapults.

Looking at that now I see that I was paying a lot of unit support for some useless units. I should have concentrated on fast units far more, and disbanded some of the others. In addition it looks like I may have been a bit cautious as my forces of knights were increasing rapidly, at least during the golden age. With a reasonably quick kill the major difficulty is getting your units in sufficient numbers to enemy cities. In this game, after finishing off one island you needed to have moved some ships around to move troops to the next target. Slow units like my MI rarely see action as other than guards for captured towns, and attacks of towns by the coast.

The conquest was a slow slog for me as I had only knights. Especially v the Zulu I had to dig in for a while absorbing their stacks of counterattacking med infantry who seemed to be very lucky initially. I needed fairly large numbers of knights to take out cities at least until I had nearly finished with AIs. I attacked some of the Zulu towns with stacks of 8-10. Clearly there is little point in merely wounding defenders. The final mop up of large Aztec cities, defended by muskets took a terrible toll.

Mad-bax and DaveMcW used cavalry, which was much better. This would have made their conquests much cleaner as cavalry are very strong, and have 3 movement which makes a huge difference as they can charge straight through cultural defences. Much fewer cavalry would have been needed with consequent lower unit support.

I was in Republic which probably wasn't sensible as I couldn't connect the distant lux until late on and I had appalling unhappiness problems and high unit support.

Of course for most of the conquest almost no units were present on the home island apart from those en route to a ship. The AI had no way across to our continent with galleys.

I have had a lot of trouble with flips in the past and tend not to garrison captured towns. I put units in them on the turn I take them which gets rid of some resistance. They move out the next turn (it isn't safe to heal in captured towns) and starve the enmy population. Once the civ is eliminated I put one defender in to get rid of remaining resistance. Once the resistance is gone then so is the defender. Troops are built for attack, not defence. I did let a few loafers hang around after the action in an island was finished, say about 1 unit for 3-4 towns. As a result later on the AI captured my town with a habour on the German island late in the game (after I had connected trade routes up). This caused a lot of unhappiness due to lost lux until the next turn when I recaptured it. Fortunately the AI aren't as ruthless as I am about razing towns.

 

[DaveMcW]

Cavalry are ridiculously powerful against a middle age opponent, so it's not hard to use them correctly.

The most important point is to send enough cavalry to capture your target. 8 should be enough for any town, and 12 for a city. Always send fully healed, vetaran cavalry. You may need a few extra to pick off stray medieval infantry and knights before they can counterattack.

I generally lost 0 or 1 cavalry per town captured, and 2 per city. My galleys moved 7 squares on ocean and cavalry moved 9 squares on road, so supply lines were not a problem.

I garrisoned all captured cities with 1 cavalry. This gave basic defense and slowly quelled resistance. If a city flipped, I could recapture it with the garrison from nearby cities. Once I eliminated a civ, all the garrisoned cavalry returned to action.


There are a few advanced techniques to improve your cavalry conquest speed.

End your turn with every healed cavalry in range of multiple cities. If you get lucky and one city falls easily, you can send the rest against the next city. Remember that you can move 2 squares on road plus 2 squares in enemy territory and still attack. Or 5 squares on road plus 1 square in enemy territory.

Use captured workers to connect your captured cities, and send some of your own workers if they aren't fast enough. This will get your reinforcements in position much faster.

If you begin to run out of cavalry, sue for peace and regroup!

Turn off science once you reach Military Tradition (and any tech needed to cross the ocean). Disconnect saltpeter (and iron if you know Chivalry) and use the gold to upgrade horsmen. Once half the continent is captured, stop upgrading and use the gold to rush-buy cavalry in barracks cities near the action.

 

[rrau]

ptw 1.27 conquest

Entered MA 330 AD with 4 turn revolt to Monarchy. We had GLib, Iroquois had G.Lighthouse and Colossus. England didn't have any wonders. We had score of 651. Became a monarchy in 380 and had too big of army and was paying 13 gpt for upkeep. England was weak so dow to capture towns for more revenue.

430 ad 1st elite victory no leader

520 ad 2nd elilte victory no leader

530 start keeping units back from english front preparing for war with Iroquois in a few turns, but in the interturn, iroquois demand iron and we refuse and they declared war and captured a town with their mounted warriors.

550 we retake our city from iroquois

570 Nottingham flipped back to english taking healing units with it we are in trouble now. Switch all city production, except for corrupt cities building courthouses, to horsemen.

620 on offensive again & capture iroquois city.

660 3rd elite victory no leader (seem to get a lot of leaders, but they die soon after promotion and don't even live to heal to try for a victory )

670 4th elite victory and finally a leader. After debating rushing FP or Sun Tzu's, elect FP as most towns have barracks at this time.

690 Built FP in Chartres

710 Zulu built Sun Tzu's

740 Recapture Nottingham and start to starve them and start a temple to rush as soon as we have the $ so they won't flip again.

760 capture Canturbury

780 Hear rumors something called Copernicus's Observatory was built by someone I don't know. The same people also built something called Leonardo's workshop in 800 ad

800ad France proclaims the destruction of the English. Also, iroquois now have pikemen which they didn't have before so they got iron from somewhere. Upon checking with my ambassadors, we now have contact with Germany, Greece, Carthage and Iroquois (it was those Germans we heard those rumors about). Everyone knows zulu and aztecs but me and at least 2 techs (invention & monotheism). We are 1 turn from researching invention on our own and have GLib, so turn off research and trade Carthage 113g for contact with zulu. Trade greece 90g + 1gpt for contact with aztecs and now know everyone.

Scores:

Germany 964
Zulu 648
France 932
Greece 864
Carthage 849
Iroquois 825
Aztecs 824
England 303

Expect to lose GLib next turn, so stop for the day and try to think of a way to maybe give the city away and recapture it soon, but are at war with iroquois and the others are far away. Finally decide not to do anything and just let it expire. Learned between 4-7 techs, but didn't record how many or which ones.

At war for a long time with iroquois as they didn't want to give me anything for peace.

1230 capture Mauch Chunk With a musketeer and enter GA with 3 turns to go on metallurgy then will enter IA and try to trade for Military tradition. Germany demanded territory map and 17 gold and had already traded maps around so gave it to them.

 

[mad-bax]

DogmaDog:
My approach was similar to Daves', just not as well executed. From what I can gather Dave researched from the start wheras I did two 40 turn runs first. This meant I had more money to upgrade than Dave, but OTOH Dave was able to get across the ocean a very long time before me, and get to Military tradition before me. I also researched navigation , banking and economics. All of these were superfluous. That money should have gone into units.

Cavalry against spears and pikes defending size 6 or smaller cities is no contest.

 

[Offa]

I guess another advantage of DaveMcW's approach is that he will have had some culture from libraries so flips wouldn't be quite as bad as they were for me. I actually resettled much of the new lands, especially initially.

I do like the idea of rushing units in the new islands as shipping them over is very slow. I was able to take enemy towns with about 8 knights so it must have been carnage using cavalry. Mil trad is definitely the number one target of a warmonger provided it can be achieved rapidly. I just never managed it.

 

[Peglegasus]

Turn off science once you reach Military Tradition (and any tech needed to cross the ocean). Disconnect saltpeter (and iron if you know Chivalry) and use the gold to upgrade horsmen. Once half the continent is captured, stop upgrading and use the gold to rush-buy cavalry in barracks cities near the action.

Oh My!!! Now why have I never thought of that? Amazing. I'm new to the civ fanatics community and gotm31 was my first... I'm visiting some of the old gotm's now. I'm playing gotm 17 and at first I was going to try for a culture win, but after reading this I'm going for a bold conquest. Just upgraded 60 horsemen on the same turn and packing them into ships now. Going after the English and the Persians because they are the closest in tech... everyone else is pretty far behind and will be easy pickins (I hope). I have NEVER had an assault force this big!

By the way, I'm really enjoying gotm 17. The squid and the fog and the volcanos were really fun and an interesting change. What other gotm's have you all really had fun with?

Peglegasus
civ3 newb

 

[denyd]

Try out GOTM 21 - The Med Melee - Playing as Greece, you'll get to meet the Minoans with their UU the Peltasts (defensive bombard), GOTM 25 as the Mongols with 4 UU's !! and GOTM 26 as the Han (China) with 2 starting settlers in different locations. You'll get to expierence minor civilazations (limited number of settlers), fast (yet weak) attacking forces and defensive bombardment.

 

[Mauer]

I hope it is ok to try and copy somebody else and claim it as my win. After reading DaveMcW's log, I think I am going to try and mimic that next month. I have never won by conquest, and only won by dom in late game. And I guess whether I win or lose, it will be a learning experience. Have a lot of research to do on the "art of war." I know one thing I am probably doing wrong (veteran responses are requested) is I will capture cities and try to defend them. And try to build culture in that city. Most of my games are won by culture, so playing these last 2 GOTM has been hard for me (as I had never played above regent untill last month). I guess I have to get it in my head "build a fighting force, build a fighting force, and build a fighting force." Corruption, tech research, and unit support are always major problems when I even think about this though. Like I said I have alot of research to do, and thought I would think outloud in the forum.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Blunder of the Month contestant

Having meet with an English scout I had succesfully guessed where the english were located and procceded to cut them off by expanding outside - in. I had succesfully built a row of cities.

Short time later Iro Warrior comes into my terriorty. I threaten them and they declare war. Big mistake. Was Shocked at the large numbers of warriors and archers. Ended up losing a city. Through which England and Iro poured settlers through.

Cost
Enemy built a total of 6 cities, 4 english and 2 iqo cities. HUGE Set back


The Excuses
Havent played any Civilization since GOTM3 wayyyyyyyy back.
(Thats version 1.01)

 

[felagund]

I did the same thing as FriendlyFire - Asked the Iroquois to leave my territory and they declared war on me. Lost 2 cities and another one suing for peace. Iroquois ended up killing me off in the end. I had a conquest loss around 1600 AD. I think it'd be hard to beat me for lowest score. I am not too fussed though as this is my first game of the month.