GOTM 37 Second (and final) Spoiler.

[Dynamic]

Lets just let it be, 12k3 looks decent...

Grate game!
As I read you widely use ROP abuse. I often use the same tactics and it gives me the great results. I miss this game but I read the spoilers and know your finish date is very fast.

 

[MOTH]

Its over. My first Deity win.

I was going for 20K figuring not many would go for it. Until 5 days ago when Sir Pleb posted his 1st spoiler that was the plan. I was already in the Modern Age with the Internet and had an early 1900's date for 20K, but due to ICS in the former Roman lands and all those nice research labs I would actually hit 100K much before this as long as I took out both Persia and Germany.

Persia was first and after a little back and forth until Persia's surplus Armour was gone it went pretty fast. I had brought every other nation in against Persia via MPPs on the turn before I made Persia attack me. I had given Germany a ROP to get the MPP and they did some big damage and they captured 5 or 6 cities and Arabia also captured one on the very southern tip. Germany took the Persian city with Smith's as well as a second Persian city with Leo's. I managed to get the Persian city with the Pyramids at least.

After they were gone I was building back up Modern Armour to face Germany (who had a slight tech lead.) Germany asked politely for the 1 tech I had that they didn't and when I said no they declared war. I still had MPPs with Arabia and India, so now it was off to destroy the Germans. Most of Germany's army was in the former Persian territories and they took (and burned a few) cities in the first turn of the war as well as a few aggressively placed cities on Germany's border (and also Rome with all the Gem's). Within 2 turns I had destroyed all the Germans in the former Persian lands and turned my attention to cleaning out the Germans and staying below the domination limit.

I wiped the German's out (with their about 60K in culture) and I had about 80K in culture gaining close to 1000 cpt. The Arab's had spaceflight and had started their SS but were short several techs.

It went pretty quick those last 16 turns ad I was getting over 1250 cpt at the end.

Final result: 100K victory in 1610AD. I didn't see any other 100K attempts posted here, so maybe I will get my first 2 medals this month! I've gotta find a quicker way to win as I can't spend 80+ hours every month.

 

[Megalou]

@MOTH
That's a nice date, certainly worthy of an award! The game struck me as one of the few where it was possible to change victory condition from 20K to 100K and still get a reasonably good date, supposing you whipped lots of temples in the beginning. But I'm surprised you had enough early cathedrals and universities to get such an early victory. I only built two "unis" before I started mass-producing units for my attacks, and was surprised that I had time even for that.

 

[MOTH]

I don't think I whipped very many temples or libraries, but I certainly rushed them. About half my cities built them to expand borders during the expansion phase. The Internet was worth 200 culture per turn with my 100 cities and my 20K city had produced about 10K culture by the time I won.

The early culture helped a lot. Three of India's cities flipped to me during the course of the game, one where I aggressively settled to beat India to saltpeter, and 2 more on the west coast where I settled in a tiny gap and rushed all the culture I could. I lost maybe 1 flip during the whole game in a just captured city. India was basically a non-player after this and during the end-game I was gifting them many of the ICS cities to act as a culture wall. This meant I had to stay about 10 +/- tiles above the domination limit just in case one of these flipped back to me. Once I decided on 100K, I rushed via unit disbands and cash at least a temple+cathedral in each of the ICS cities with some getting Libraries and Colloseums as well. Once I got Longevity I expanded my use of selective draft and then disband as well.

 

[Randy]

This meant I had to stay about 10 +/- tiles above the domination limit just in case one of these flipped back to me.

Couldn't you just say no I don't want the city when it asks you?

 

[MOTH]

Couldn't you just say no I don't want the city when it asks you?

Why didn't I think of that This was my first time playing close to the domination limit without crossing it. Oh well, next time....

 

[al_thor]

I usually play Emporer, but I have played Diety before and won (and also lost), but this was by far and away the most challenging game that I have ever played. It certainly shows in my scores as follows (Open class):
Game status: Spaceship Victory for Iroquois
Game date: 1866 AD
Firaxis score: 3684
Jason score: 3862 (pretty bad, I know)

In my game, the Persians went ballistic and wiped out both the Romans and the Germans. I think the only thing that saved me was the fact that Persia stayed in Monarchy THE ENTIRE GAME. Being as huge as he was, he could have gone Communism and really dominated, I think. As it was, I had a bit of trouble holding him off at the choke-point during the 3 battles that we had.

In my first war with him, I did an ROP Rape in order to get the Great Library in Rome. After taking the city, I was barely able to hold it for the required turn in order to get A TON of Techs. I had researched Military Tradition and then shut my Science off completey - when I took the GL, I went all the way to Replacable Parts - it was awesome. I then abandoned (destroyed) the city, (it also had the Sistine) pillaged what I could and braced for his attack at the choke-point. Very close.

Also, at this same time, I FINALLY triggered my GA, which helped me immensly in getting the TOE, my first of MANY (if not ALL) of the GW's. Still, it was touch and go with the powers of Persia and also Arabia who had conquered most of the Carthage land (I snuck a few setters into the open areas to secure more Coal and my only Oil as the 2 battled).

Again, GREAT Game, and many thanks to Ainwood and the entire GOTM staff!!

 

[Redbad]

No, Redbad also made a fine effort. As a language teacher I must of course admonish Redbad for not dividing his spoiler into paragraphs, which may explain why you missed it.

Oops, point taken

I'm getting a bit bold in my remarks here due to my imminent disappearance from the forum (until the advent of Civ IV), but I hope it is not considered as flaming.

No offense, bit i'll hit back immediatly

As a language teacher I must of course admonish Redbad for not dividing his spoiler into paragraphs, which may explain why you missed it.

As not being a language teacher: would sections not be more correct english than paragrahs?

 

[Redbad]

Hmmmm, that was indeed why I missed it yes. It even was the first post in this thread. My apologies to Redbad for disregarding his blob of text

The mistake is completely mine.


I apologise for polluting this thread with such a blob.


I've made some small alterations, which will hopefully improve the readability of the text.

 

[AlanH]

Wow! That was an epic! Congratulations ainwood on a terrific set up.

Open Ancient Age spoiler

We arrived in the Middle Ages and Monarchy in 1025 BC, having decided not to bother with research. The other guys were doing pretty well without our help.

Phoney Wars

In 1000 BC we had just started a phony war with Germany, allied with Carthage, France and Rome. The Romans brought the Arabs in, and India signed up with Germany against France. We had Centralia on the eastern end of the choke point (what an appropriate name!), and thanks to our alliances it never ever came under attack throughout the game.

The next few turns saw the Arabs, Rome and Carthage ally against India, and in 710 BC we decided the time was ripe for our Golden Age. As Germany was too far away for comfort, we joined in the dogpile and bought Feudalism and an alliance with France against Gandhi for gpt. Our Mounted Warriors arrived at the gates of Karachi and our GA began. We now felt rich enough to buy Persia's alliance against Germany.

India was feeling the heat, and signed peace with Rome, but it was too little, too late. In 670 BC we bought Monotheism from the Arabs for gpt. Our alliance wih Carthage against Germany ended, but France and Rome were happy to renew. Rome even gave us their worldly goods - 2 gold and a map!

Carthage was becoming a cultural giant, and I lost one native city to a flip in 630 BC.

In 610 BC we bought Chivalry from France and used it as part payment for Republic from Persia. Meanwhile France and Carthage had been carving up India between them. Carthage and Persia were becoming the two gorrillas, one on each sub-continent, with the Iroquois sitting in the middle.

Real Wars

I had decided early on that, second to survival on Deity, a military victory was my objective, so after we took Karachi and triggered our Golden Age we focused on growth of our armies. and let our allies fight it out in distant lands. The war came closer to home in 510 BC when Germany and France allied against us. In 430 BC Carthage put India out of its misery and in 410 BC the Arabs allied with France against us.

We signed up Carthage in 390 BC to look after the Arabs; Persia and Rome continued to keep Germany busy, and we started to move out into France. By the turn of the millenium we had taken 6 French cities.

Between 10 BC to 50 AD we bought Invention from Persia, and Gunpowder and Chemistry from Carthage for gpt and gold, and we made a first step into the eastern continent, taking Pompeii from the Germans.

Iroquois vs. France
France was proving to be a tough nut to crack. Our knights suffered mightily at the hands of her Musketeers, and four captured cities flipped back during the long draw-out war. We did get large amounts of cash with each city we captured, and two Great Leaders were born. The first built the Forbidden Palace in Marseilles in 260 AD and the other built an army that went up in smoke with one of the flips .

Carthage killed off the Arabs in 420 AD and Persia destroyed Rome in 430 AD.

We bought Metallurgy from Carthage in 290 AD and Military Tradition from Persia in 390 AD. In 470 AD France was down to three cities, and I made peace for two of them, Theology and her remaining gold. 480 AD saw my only dastardly act of the game when I redeclared on Joan, and Lyons flipped back to France again! Finally, in 500 AD, I wiped her out. Just us, Persia, Carthage and Germany left.

Iroquois vs. Germany

All attention now focused on Germany, and the Great Library situated way over on the eastern side of the world. Persia and Rome had been keeping Bismark busy on my behalf for 1500 years, and now it was time to join in.

530 AD Munich
570 AD Nuremberg
590 AD Frankfurt
620 AD Berlin, 11 techs rolled into our kit bag from the Great Library and we were into the Industrial Era. Unfortunately Nationalism was one of them, so we lost the short-rush option for cavalry through muskets.

Having reached the point where I could read this spoiler, I quickly confirmed my suspicion that Domination was the military victory condition du jour, and most of my fellow warmongers would be getting insanely fast dates. So Conquest became my target.

In 670 AD I finished off the German cities that hadn't gone to Persia, and revolted to Republic to increase my cash flow. Then there were three. Both Persia and Carthage were stronger than Iroquois, but Persia looked slightly less daunting, and was isolated from my core. I agreed a MPP with Carthage in order to ensure her friendship in the next stage, and in 710 AD I bought Steam from Hannibaline and started to build my strategic rail network.

Iroquois vs. Persia

It was 870 AD, and Persia's muskets had been teasing my German cities, so I politely requested that Xerxes get his troops off my lawns. He declined, so I captured nine of his cities in that turn , mostly ex German and Roman. I allied with Carthage against him. By 920 AD, when 8 cities fell to my cavalry, Persia was consigned to Three Tile Island in the middle of nowhere. So I rushed a couple of Galleons - my first and last naval builds and loaded up with cavalry. Carthage made peace with Persia in 950 AD, but Zerxes still had some frigates and ironclads attacking my shoreline, so the MPP kicked in and she redeclared in the same interturn, and before my Galleons could reach his island the news came in that she had destroyed him.

Iroquois vs. Carthage

So now, Hannibaline, it's just you and me, Babe! In 1010 AD I tried to steal Industrialisation at high risk. No dice. I tried extortion. She called my bluff. Well, it was no bluff, my dear, it's your turn now. I declared war, and seven Carthaginian cities fell under Iroquois rule. My navy landed on what was now Carthage's Three Tile Island. The Carthage Carnage began.

I had about fifty cavalry and could make or rush about four or five each turn. Carthage's cities were heavily defended with rifles all the way down, and she had a lot of cavalry to counter with. I had not built a single defender, and wasn't going to start now. I had about 20 captured cannons. As the war progressed I built a couple of cavalry armies, and they provided defensive cover in the front line cities and later moved forward to beat up some of the more obstinate rifles. All the while I was expecting to face an Infantryman.

It was not pretty. In 1020 AD the first counter-attack retook Hippo, captured one of my core cites and razed Karachi After that we were able to recover and gain enough ground to be within explorer reach of Carthage's horses. I rushed some suicidal explorers and pillaged the horses, and demolished her coal and wines supplies for good measure. After that we mopped up a few cavalry in the front lines, and picked off another seven who landed from transports near Salamanca, undefended. Life was much easler when we knew they had nothing that could reach a city in one turn.

[EDIT - forgot to mention] In 1030 AD my Republican citizens were very quickly getting sick of the death and destruction, not helped by the early losses of three cities. So we revolted back to Monarchy - one turn magic bullet.

I held on to Carthage's core cities to provide some cultural border protection, but razed coastal cities after they had provided corridors in to the next city in line. The end game was played out up the western coast, as it avoided the mountains in the middle. I was dicing with the domination limit for the last 10 turns, and abandoned a couple of eastern cities to hold it off. In 1150 AD our military adviser grudgingly admitted that we were 'Average', and in 1190 AD we razed the final six cities to claim the world as our own.

Final date: 1200 AD
Firaxis: 8170
Jason: 9479

DEITY !!! [dance]

Bloody marvellous!

Mistakes I'll learn from - maybe

Should have taken note of France's UU. Fighting her right through her golden age was not clever.

Should have pillaged Carthage's horses a few turns earlier. It was one of those times when my autopilot got in the way and I completely forgot I could make Explorers until I walked away from the game for some sleep.

Should probably have played dirtier if I was really serious about date and score. No RoP rape, no welshing on deals except the redeclaraion on France, only a couple of combat settlers to push back cultural borders near the end. I'm old softy really

Should have ignored my military adviser when he kept complaining that we were weak. That guy's an amateur!

Here are the F3 screens through the game, plus the money shot

 

[High King J.J.]

A new personal record!

This is the 20th Gotm that I have downloaded, played and haven't been able to submit due to the fact that I can't spend my whole life at (my own) PC. In other words, not enough time to finish. Ever. Ok, maybe I don't just go for the earliest possible conquest victory, maybe I don't automate my workers, but frankly that's the way I enjoy and to me that counts more than getting my name on the low end of some score list.

Even though this may be ing I would still like to see a test game with more than one month of playing time. How would it hurt to have 2 months playing time, fast players could submit every month's game and slower ones could finally play a game to the end they like. Only problem might be that impatient people could not wait for another month to see the final results.

Oh well, I was doing okay on this game, now I'll probably never finish it. No use bothering to write about it. I was in industrial times, was building up a sufficient forse of cavalry to join the global wars...
well, maybe next time, or the next 20th time...

To those who did finish on time, High J.J. s you.

 

[a space oddity]

[shameless plug]
Why don't you try a HoF game? OK, you can't play Ainwoods' great maps but you can play in your own speed and take as much time as you need. Why don't you take a look and see if you like it.
[/shameless plug]

@Alan: Well done!

 

[solenoozerec]

@High King – you may try a few things to speed up the process, do not animate movements, battles, etc. Some people manage to spend less than 10 hours for most of the games. Go to result pages and watch time that EsatP spent. You will be surprised. I am wondering how he manages to play so fast.

@AlanH – waw! A question: I thought that upgrade of MW to knight is not worth it. MW is much cheaper, but almost as good in attack as knight, so I never got chivalry. Do you think, based on your experience, that chivalry was worth buying?

 

[AlanH]

@solenoozerec: I think in my case I would have been slaughtered if I'd tried to use MW against Musketeers. I don't do defenders because they are too slow and until gunpowder they are no better than knights and defending and useless at attacking, so I'd have been exposing 3.1.2 MW to 3.4.3 Musketeers (3 movement because France was pretty well roaded). Knights at 4.3.2 have one extra attack point plus far better defence. They suffered heavy losses whenever they came up against Musketeers, so I dread to think what would have happened if I'd tried that with MW.

Re the cost: I bought Chivalry from France in 610 BC for 191 gold + 25 gpt + WM. France declared on me in 510 BC, 5 turns later. So Chivalry cost me 316 gold, and when I started taking French cities I was winning 500 gold with each one.Paris alone was worth over 900 gold. I think that was quite a good return on my investment

I sympathise with High King JJ, but I don't have an answer. I played three or four GOTMs during 2003 which never saw the submission page just because I ran out of time. I seem to be getting better at it, but I'm still submitting very late in the month and I wish I knew the secret for fast play. This one took me a lot of the month, with several long night sessions. Almost continuous war, plus the micromanagement of a hundred or more workers, makes for very long tuns, and I don't feel confident to turn animations off. I want to see exactly what's happening.

 

[Randy]

@High King,

This game took me 108+ hours. I took more time to do every thing right and recheck every thing. My normal game time is about 20 to 30 hours.

 

[Offa]

A new personal record!

This is the 20th Gotm that I have downloaded, played and haven't been able to submit due to the fact that I can't spend my whole life at (my own) PC. In other words, not enough time to finish. Ever. Ok, maybe I don't just go for the earliest possible conquest victory, maybe I don't automate my workers, but frankly that's the way I enjoy and to me that counts more than getting my name on the low end of some score list.

It is a pity to constantly play but not quite join the party.

I took 80 hours to play GOTM20 just to finish 61st and decided that wasn't going to happen again. The main thing is to play the start at least reasonably well, even if it needs a bit of micromanagement. After that you can afford to play very quickly, as long as you are following and reviewing your strategic plan. Strategy doesn't take very long. I assume that is how Drazek achieved all his sub 10hour top games.

You ought to use Dianthus' utility suite -/+ Ainwood's assistant. I have both running in the background, and I presume most people do. They are both superb and can save you a lot of time. Gone are the endless rounds of checking every AI in the diplo screen every turn.

Of course if Ainwood ever gave us a small map ...

The hall of fame would dispense with the deadline but it is largely full of very strong players milking huge maps, and those games take serious time. There are also tiny conquests there, but they don't sound like the games you like to play.

 

[a space oddity]

The HoF is currently still lacking good early finishes on many victory conditions (most notably Spaceship, 100k and Diplo) and map sizes. Everybody is welcome to try and fill some of the empty slots.

 

[solenoozerec]

It is a pity to constantly play but not quite join the party.

It is a pity to constantly play but not quite join the party.

In my GOTM37, I simply :suicide: but I submitted my game. An alternative was to spend >50 hrs trying to survive in a war with Persia.
And probably I will spend a lot of time for COTM7.
In fact, it seems to me that games at higher levels take significantly more time that those at lower levels, at least in my hands.
I could not even use a rally point because I am always afraid that somebody will suddenly attack from a strange place and therefore I move forces manually. On lower levels, this is not a problem.

 

[Jove]

Arrrr, I guess I have to call this one a historiographic loss. I simply don't have enough days left to finish the game! Is it possible to submit a game without having reached a formal victory condition? Abandoning all my cities seems like a waste of a solid civ. It's about 1200 AD, I'm number one in in-game score, but my cavalry are facing infantry and several civs are well entrenched. I think I can dig it out, but it would take into next weekend to pillage all my enemies' tiles and starve them out. Obviously it wasn't a record-breaking performance, but I did very much enjoy this one. Maybe the next Deity game can have a 5 week window? See y'all in GOTM38!

 

[AlanH]

Sorry Jove. I feel your pain. We don't have a satisfactory way to score an incomplete game. Burning your civ to the ground and letting the AI walk into your capital is the only way I know to end it quickly.