Gotm 37 Final Spoiler - Game Submitted

jesusin

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GOTM 37 Final Spoiler



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Stop! If you are participating in GOTM 37, then you MUST NOT read this thread unless
  • You have submitted your entry


Posting Restrictions

  • Please do not reveal locations of modern resources (coal and later)
 
Settled in place, and played peacefully for a while. Second city was to the SW, grabbing copper, gold and rice. Third city SE, on the rice so it could work both fish. Fourth city between capital and second city, by the lake and the corn. This turned out to be my best production city, along with the capital.

Built the GLighthouse and the GLibrary as my only early wonders. Went after Calendar pretty early due to lack of trading partners and abundant calendar resources. After that, teched toward Astro. Didn't get any religion until Astro, sometime around 700-800 AD.

Attacked Bismarck around 1000 AD, knocked him back to the tundra. Lost the liberalism race to Cathy. I like Diplo on isolated/semi-isolated starts because it's easy to avoid diplomatic penalties. Cathy and Toku seesawed back and forth as population leader. By the time I built the UN, Cathy was pop leader and she won the first vote. By switching to Mercantilism and dogpiling Bismarck along with Napoleon and Toku, I was able to win the second vote and the victory.
 
This was my attempt to return to GOTM after being away quite a while.

I made a pathetic attempt at a cultural run on the contender level {I should have started back with the Adventurer Class Save}.

I learned and {re}-learned a good many things that I had forgotten or hadn't known. I look forward to reading everyone else's approaches to this game. I let my science rate and economy fall apart mid-game, and I never recovered.

For me, the game ended when Napoleon, I think it was, captured one of my three cities heading for legendary status... well, yes, it was still a LO00oooong way off.... Earlier in the game I almost lost a city to Barbs...

I also forgot that I could submit the game (I retired, or abandoned the game) before I replayed parts to learn from. So I did not submit the game.

But it has been refreshing to return at least for a while to the GOTM forum even though it appears it will take me a while to work back up to the EXcellent-Newb Enhanced Wistful Beginner (Ex-NEWB) class specialist 1o1 where I was last year when Real Life pulled me away.

Merry Christmas and Happy CIV'ing in th' new year!
Adama
 
I generally play Immortal, so I wanted to play a tough victory condition. I thought Immortal/Continents/Normal speed would make domination a tough challenge. Turns out I was right, I was not able to win the game. :lol:

Actually, I'm pretty sure I was going to win, but I was victim of a very unlucky sequence of events. Throughout my game, Togu dominated in every sense... tech pace, land, population. So, my strategy was to complete my Dom at Catherine's and Napoleon's expense and be friends with Togu. I got to friendly status with Togu by running Mercantilism and through joining him in a phoney war.

So, here is what happened:

Turn 353: I was completing my positioning of units to go after Napoleon (I already had all of Cathy's cities on their continent). UN votes environmentalism. This forces me off of Mercantilism. This immediately dropped Togu from "friendly" to "pleased".

Turn 354: Next turn, I DOW on Napoleon.

Turn 355: Next turn after that, Togu DOW's on me in spite of being pleased.

Togu then started dropping MA's and Mech Inf's on my land and hitting me with stealth bombers. Most of my military was on the other continent, and I had only teched to tanks, so things got a little hairy. I almost abandoned, but was actually enjoying the challenge. He took two cities, razing one. After a real struggle, I beat him back and ultimately recaptured my unrazed city and took two of his cities on the northern end of my continent.

However, my desperate fight with Togu, along with the damage to my infrastructure from his bombers, stalled my war with Napoleon. I simply couldn't sustain on both fronts. Before I could get back after Napoleon again, Togu launched his spaceship in 1966.

This was a tough scenario for domination. Normal speed is hard enough, on top of that our continent was pretty sucky (Bismark's land was like an anchor). Really good challenge, I thought I had it won. Too bad I was done in by the UN vote bringing Togu into war against me.
 
Okay, so I pulled this one out -- if badly. The worst part is that I feel like I missed a golden opportunity to excel with culture. (The truth is I'm probably not capable of that just yet, but still... :sad:) Anyway, I hope someone going culture gets the fastest victory time in this GOTM. The conditions seem about as favorable as any I've ever seen.

I won a culture victory in 1953. My early game troubles were bad (find them here), but my mid-game mismanagements turned out to be ugly. I put the Hermitage in the wrong city, never could get the great person farm functioning well, got 4 great scientists (2 instead of artists), missed getting Music first, only had two religions until 1775, and finished with my three legendary cities more out of sync then in any other culture game I've ever played (and still won). My first city went legendary on turn 309 in 1878. My last two cities didn't go legendary until turns 360 and 363 (1950 and 1953). by that time the first city was over 10,000 culture points over the legendary threshold. :wallbash:

On the good side, I was able to win, at least. That has to be worth something, I hope (maybe a shield?). I was first to Liberalism in 1160 AD (turn 176). Got to trade a bit after 560 AD with Bismark and then Cathy. Took Nationalism from Liberalism and shut off research after failing to be first to Music in 1200 AD (turn 180). No conflicts with anyone other than barbarians the entire game.


Details to Liberalism (1160 AD):

RESEARCH PATH & DATES:
Spoiler :
008 - Mining
016 - The Wheel
023 - Pottery
032 - Bronze Working
040 - Writing (2400 BC)
055 - Alphabet (1800 BC)
057 - Hunting
060 - Animal Husbandry (1600 BC)
064 - Polytheism
070 - Archery (inserted)
074 - Literature (1040 BC)
076 - Priesthood
085 - Code of Laws (750 BC)
094 - Monarchy
115 - Civil Service (1 AD)
116 - Meditation
126 - Philosophy (275 AD)
129 - Horseback Riding (350 AD)
137 - Paper
138 - Masonry
138 - Trade for Monotheism & Sailing (Bismark)
139 - Trade for Iron Working, Math, & Agriculture (Bismark)
156 - Trade for Currency (Cathy)
159 - Trade for Feudalism & Metal Casting (Bismark)
159 - Trade for Compass (Cathy)
161 - Trade for Optics (Cathy)
166 - Education (1060 AD)
172 - Trade for Construction (Bismark)
176 - Liberalism (1160 AD) <First!>
176 - Nationalism from Liberalism
Shut down research.

IMPORTANT MILESTONES:
Spoiler :
Cities:
000/4000BC - Madrid (founded in place)
092/575BC - Barcelona (SE peninsula on top of rice & between fish)
136/520 AD - Gepid (1N of copper near gold; captured from Barbs)
148/760 AD - Seville (1S of deer in N Peninsula)
160/1000 AD - Cordoba (2S of corn, 2E of iron)
212/1510 AD - Toledo (between fish & crab on island)
6 others much later, including one flipped.

Other Important Milestones:
032/2720 BC - BW & Revolt to Slavery
040/2400 BC - Writing
052/1920 BC - Library
069/1240 BC - Great Scientist
069/1240 BC - Academy in Madrid
084/775 BC - 1st Settler produced
094/525 BC - Monarchy
096/475 BC - Revolt to Hereditary Rule (no, I don't know why the delay)
115/1 AD - Civil Service & Revolt to Bureaucracy
152/840 AD - Napoleon circumnavigates the globe
176/1160 AD - First to Liberalism

FOUNDING DATES OF RELIGIONS (to 500 AD):
Spoiler :
028/2880 BC - Buddhism (??? -no notes)
035/2600 BC - Hinduism (??? -no notes)
044/2240 BC - Judaism (??? -no notes)
085/750 BC - Confucianism (Spain)
117/50 AD - Christianity (France)
126/275 AD - Taoism (Spain)
146/720 AD - Islam (France)

EARLY WONDERS:
Spoiler :
046/2160 BC - Stonehenge (Japan)
065/1400 BC - Pyramids (France)
070/1200 BC - Oracle (France)
084/775 BC - Parthenon (Japan)
084/775 BC - Colossus (France)
???/???? BC - Great Lighthouse (France)
104/275 BC - Hanging Gardens (France)
126/275 AD - Chichen Itza (France)
129/350 AD - Hagia Sophia (France)
138/560 AD - Notre Dame (Japan)
138/560 AD - Sistine Chapel (France)
140/600 AD - Great Library (France)
153/860 AD - Versailles (France)
178/1180 AD - Angkor Wat (Germany)
186/1260 AD - Taj Mahal (France)
188/1280 AD - Spiral Minaret (France)

BUILD ORDER:
Spoiler :

015 - Worker
033 - Work Boat (sent exploring)
039 - Warrior
044 - Warrior
052 - Library (for GS)
062 - Warrior
065 - Warrior
072 - Archer (barb axe invading)
073 - Archer (ouch... bad RNG! :mad:)
074 - Warrior
084 - Settler
 
OK, this post's title may not make any sense to some (or most of you) but I just watched Woody Allen's last movie, so I couldn't resist it... Furthermore, akin to the movie, in my game, a passionate friendship between Izzy, Catherine and Napoleon (!) derailed my plans of a fast space race victory and practically forced me to go for diplo.

Overseas contacts started at 540AD (Toku's caravel) and were completed in the early 700AD's from cultural borders. Soon, lots of backfilling trade techs were done, while we continue to tech towards Lib. HR was hastily adopted to get Cathy pleased and soon friendly, and giving in to her request for Education was decisive - I risked losing the race to Lib but decided to take the chance - and it worked well.

Friendship with Napoleon was harder to get - he even entered "we have enough on our hands" for a while but then he left that state and became pleased to me a couple of turns before Bismark DOW'ed me (1260AD)! I was able to bribe Cathy and Nappy to join me in that war, and from then on mutual military struggle did the rest of the trick. Having a continent for himself, Toku was destined to be my opponent in the UN vote - but just in case I got him to friendly as well! :lol:

About the war, I wasn't quite ready for it yet but after Lib I had gone towards Chemistry/Steel, so in a few turns my cannons/grens started to roll, to eventually capture all the german cities. Bismark didn't live to see the UN vote.

However, the war effort diverted my focus from research, and Mass Media wasn't learned before 1570AD. I also didn't manage to produce a GE or set up a decent hammer city, so it took me 13 turns to build/rush the UN, spending some $5k on it - 1640AD. At least the voting was straighforward and I won on the first try - 1680AD.

Judging from the first spoiler posts, I don't think it will be enough to get me the award, godotnut will most likely beat me by 2-3 centuries! Nevertheless I was quite pleased to win a Immortal level game, and moreover playing it peacefully (not declaring on any AI, that is ;)).

Thanks jesusin for the great game you provided to us!
 
Launched in 1933 (I think), Chaty was right behind so I was actually happy to win with the following mistakes:

*Moved the settler (and back so 1 turn lost)
*Self teched towards caravels, should have trusted the AI to find me, so I was late to Byro and missed Lib with 3 :(
*Waited to long to take out Bismark, with the nerf capital he was a sitting duck
*No free GP (not even the GE)

Please with:
*Kept Nappy Friendly so I could trade a lot with him well into the modern era (and I still had a DP with Cathy).

Firsts:
*Ran a first ever non pyramids SE (not to sure it was the best way to go but at least I tried it :D)

Overall a fun game :goodjob:, although a bit to easy to catch up after taking out Bismark. But I guess the lack of numbers AI was the key to this.

Diety next month? ;)
 
I did not research optics thinking that the AI would surely find me long before I found any of them. This did not pan out.

Japan was the 1st to make contact. And by the time napoleon stopped by Russia had been completely wiped out.

Although France and Japan were friendly, Napoleon did start a war and I was hoping I could use this for a diplo win. However, they eventually made peace and japan ended up voting for napoleon thereby giving him the diplo win.

My tech pace was far too slow for the spaceship and Napoleon had an incredibly huge army. I focused on attacking japan and was able to take most of his island cities.
 
Launched in 1933 (I think), Chaty was right behind so I was actually happy to win with the following mistakes:

*Moved the settler (and back so 1 turn lost)

That's not a mistake (well, unless it was because of a misclick that you moved the settler), that's a calculated risk: Delaying settling in the hope of finding a better position to settle. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn't.
 
That's not a mistake (well, unless it was because of a misclick that you moved the settler), that's a calculated risk: Delaying settling in the hope of finding a better position to settle. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn't.

True, but the mistake was that as I didn´t move last month I did it this instead without really considering if it was smart in the given situation :)
 
I don't remember all the details....

I launched in 1975 ...1-2 turns ahead of the Japanese.

I razed Paris (amphibious assault) in the 1800's to prevent Nappy from going cultural.

It wasn't very pretty at all...but it was a victory!
 
Seasons greetings all. I very much appreciate the GoTM (though I have yet to submit). I am ashamed of how mediocere I must by.

Launched in 1933 (I think), Chaty was right behind so I was actually happy to win with the following mistakes:

Anyway Thorrez, might you post something of a timeline? Doesn’t need to be as detailed as Balthalion! I would like to try repeating your success.
 
Seasons greetings all. I very much appreciate the GoTM (though I have yet to submit). I am ashamed of how mediocere I must by.

Instead, you should be ashamed of having read this thread before submitting:nono:. Please, read the 'reading requirements' in the first post of this thread again.

But you shouldn't be ashamed of the level of your play. When someone gets an incredible result, they rush here to show how good they are. When someone makes a mistake and loses his game, they feel bad and don't want to talk about it, so they don't post (or even submit). As a result, this threads are full of wonderful results and victories while the truth is most people do not play so well as you'd imagine by reading the threads.

I heartily appreciate it when people post about their games. If they've won, I can learn from them. If they've lost, I can learn from their mistakes and I can give them advice... advice that other people will correct and improve, making me learn further.

So, beetle, won't you amend your mischief by sharing a nice writeup?
 
Well said jesusin....and I'll make sure I Moderator Action. BOTM 13 is still in progress, so you mustn't discuss your BOTM 13 game outside the BOTM 13 spoilers - DS
 
"When someone makes a mistake and loses his game, they feel bad and don't want to talk about it, so they don't post (or even submit)."

No doubt there's much truth to this. Hawk posted earlier about the difficult game he had, and it was one of the more interesting spoiler posts I've read recently.

BTW, Hawk mentioned the difficulty winning a Dom'n victory at normal speed. Why would/does the speed make it significantly more difficult?

Appreciate the interesting game with a difficult mix of leaders to deal with.

Dom'n victory about 1550 using standard tactics. Only thing a little different was excessive reliance on running specialists for research, gold, and Great Scientists to bulb Optics and Astronomy.
 
BTW, Hawk mentioned the difficulty winning a Dom'n victory at normal speed. Why would/does the speed make it significantly more difficult?

Well, for domination you have to move your units to the enemy, don't you? The quicker the speed, the slower the units. Anyway, I'd say you already knew that.

Also there are a number of non-linearities among speeds. You can read about most of them in the 1000AD culture Deity thread, from post 257 on.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=232250
 
Jesusin, you have prompted me to write my post.

Spaceship loss to Japan in 1949....Guess this level is still too hard for me....but I'm no stranger to the loss result so I dont mind.

Like a lot of the early discussion I thought cultural would be my best shot, and like a lot of others I found the poor German start gave me enough of a lever to establish my empire. - My intitial build was worker/warrior/warrior/warrior/warrior to fog bust to avoid barb problems, then plan being to allow Madrid to grow and then chop/whip settlers. - Then rush settlers to the copper/river to the West and another to block the German settlers on the hill above the western lake. - I took the risk of declining open borders with Germany until after I had built my blocking cities.

During this time I did manage to grab 2 of the 3 early religions (And later a third) - So I thought I had enough religions to have a fair crack at the cultural game.

The plan was to use Madrid, Barca (Copper city) and Cordoba (Fur city) as the culture cities....Fur city was a poor site...but my thinking was that with sea tile commerce + as many cathedrals and GA bombs I could manage it might be OK. (And I didn't have anything better)

I was teching towards Liberalism as normal, using Madrid as a high food GA production centre+cottages on all other tiles, cottaging the river tiles + making Copper city a production centre to convert production to culture later, and was trying to grow the fur city as much as possible (it was slow work)

I'd also spread Hinduism to the Germans and was getting temple income.

I had expected the Germans to turn against me and hence had the majority of my army in the West when out of the blue the Russians declared on me and landed forces on the rice peninsula south of Madrid.- My rice city immediately fell and was razed.

I had 1 warrior defending Madrid against the advancing Russian macemen/cats....I thought GAME OVER. I couldn't convince any other AI to join me against the Russians - But did I give in?..Hell no. This was my chance to learn more about how the AI operates at this level....I decided to whip up as much of a defence as possible. - Luckilly I had just completed construction so whipped lots of catapults. - It worked. - My returning Western axeman army + the whipped cats fought off the Russians......But only after my cottages around Madrid had been pillaged and my population had been ravished by the whip. - This upset the culture plans considerably.....After the first Russian wave was destroyed the nation built and tech'd military expecting another attack....this also upset my culture plans, but 2nd and 3rd Russians waves were destroyed (keeping me in the game). Catherine wouldn't make peace.

Eventually Napoleon did me a favour and destroyed the Russian mainland. - A brief moment of joy was to see my cat/maceman stack wiping out the final Russian city (defended by Riflemen) on the Silver island in the north.

All this War stuff had delayed Liberalism considerably so I was very late in getting it and switching to culture favourable civics.

It was far too late. - All 3 culture cities were about 20K when Toku won the space race.

So I'm thinking my big mistake in this game was not paying enough attention to my foreign relations...which would have let me avoid the war in the first place???

- Anyone got advice on "What does the AI consider before declaring?"

How could I have avoided being DOW'd?

PS...I didn't try DS's civic switching technique from the first post.....Did it work?
 
I for one don't know how to avoid the random DoW other than being stronger than the opposition. Russia DoW'ed me also but attacked in the NW at one of Biz's ex-cities. I lost control of it for a few turns but had sufficient army in the neighborhood to regain it a short time later. I was able to bribe Toku in on my side with a nice tech and that helped a lot! I used Spy's at the end to monitor the AI's spaceship development allowing me to launch 1st by a couple turns.
 
I retired this one around 1800AD. I was headed for the happy hunting grounds courtesy of Tokugawa. I went against my better judgment and didn't try to take Bismark out early. This was mostly due to discovering it was just the two of us on the home continent. It usually means a very slow tech pace if you eliminate the other civ, so I decided to play nice. Never, never, ever trust one of the Aggressive AI. Bizzy and I played so very nice. He was pleased with me up to about 1400. We traded, shared the same two religions in most cities, and generally had a good time. I was going for a Diplo win, so I did lots of trades. Bizzy decides, even though he's pleased that I should die. He DOWs and takes one, then two cities. Neither one is really crucial to me. He isn't making much progress. Then Toku dogpiles. I settle for peace with Bizzy by gifting a lowly city in the tundra. I am fighting Toku to a standstill, but he still takes 1 city. Again not life threatening. He can't make a whole lot of progress and will settle but I decline. Two turns later Bizzy dogpiles and I pack it in. Did I mention I was fighting Rifles, Cavalry, and Cannons with LBs, XBs, and Maces? There weren't any other wars until about 1100AD when Nappy DOWed Cathy. They went back and forth with no clear winner.

I settled in place, with a 2nd city on the eastern shore of the lake. The third settler was headed for the Copper/gold but was beaten there by Bizzy. I like how the AI knows where the resources are without even exploring, walking a dozen squares in a beeline from his borders ( end rant). I lost the Oracle and the CS sling by about 6 turns. I could have made it by going for the Oracle before building a settler, but wouldn't have made the CS sling. I did out expand Bizzy and could have taken him out, but I wanted the trading partner to speed up the tech pace. It was an unsatisfying Immortal game for me. I'm sure if I replay I'll butcher Bizzy at the first opportunity.

One thing that did pay good dividends was founding Buddhism and building the holy shrine. I spread Missionaries to all the cities on my continent for a good amount of gold. I should have founded two, and built both Shrines. It is a good source of income.

One of the things I really hated was the fact that as soon as Bizzy declared war, I got all sorts of unhappiness for "my war" with members of the faith. Say what? I was surprised by the amount of unhappiness. It crippled my economy and brought research to a halt, even at 0%.
 
Plan was to go after Buddhism, Conf. and Tao since these only require copper for its major culture buildings. But a slight deviation due to AI not founding Hindu ended up causing me both Conf and Tao. The plan went to hell from there.

After the first session, I just about gave up. I kept on missing Just about every wonder I tried. Got Hindu and Buddhist religions, only to miss CoL by about 20 turns and Philo by 1 turn. Finally built the Colosus and thought "about time".

Capital was built on the spot. Second culture city was selected to be on the coast to SW with iron (pleasent to find - thanks J), Corn and sheep with many cottageable tiles. But the second city was founded further west with gold in the fat cross and elephants and many plains tiles. This was to be a production city. In the hind site, I sould have gone to the next river and made it my third culture city. GP farm was built on rice to south in order to get both fish. The third culture city was founded on the west side of the river and with rice but only one hill. Poor choice.

Converted Biz to hindu and we stayed in it until the end. Since both Toku (untill merchantilism) and Nappy were annoyed, we teched all the way to Gunpowder before shutting down science. Oh yeah, we never met the catherine person others are talking about. Just got the message "Russian Civilization was destroyed".

Poor choice with the 100% culture building (40 turns to build it in 3rd LC city), It should have gone to the second LC city and used the 10+ GA in the GP farm which had over 15000 culture in it, but this is my first culture game in vanilla C4.

At the end of the game we had 9 cities total and was able to sustain 90% culture. As a matter of fact every two turn it was set at 100% in honor of the mm master who created the game. We ended up with third religion when the captured barb city got Christianity. So the three cities had 3.5, 2.5 and 2.5 multiplier.

Ran Cast and Paci most of the game except to do some rushing. Switched to FS in 1280 AD(T188), but teched till 1480 AD(T208) at 80%-100%. Game ended in 1920 AD. I am thrilled to say the least since this is my first Immortal game I won :cool: (and completed). First 2, just gave up and others were a fast death i could not even quit.:lol:

When Nappy had his hands full as he was racing toward space, it was Tokugava he was after.....phew. Thank goodness his relations stay at -2 for different religions.

Anyways I am replaying the game to see what would have happened if i went with the GP farm.
 
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