GOTM 38 Final Spoiler - Game Submitted

AlanH

Mac addict, php monkey
Moderator
Hall of Fame Staff
GOTM Staff
Supporter
Joined
Jan 9, 2003
Messages
29,699
Location
England

GOTM 38 Final Spoiler



Reading Requirements

Stop! If you are participating in GOTM 38, 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)
 
Goal: Fastest conquest

Settled two south thinking this would be the best short term capital. Researched AH, found horses in the north near the capital of JC. Build a settler to grap the spot and after connecting both cities the Immortal production begun.
Also did the CS slingshot but I'm not sure if this was a smart move. As far as I remember it took 12 turns to build the oracle and this corresponds to 5 Immortals.
Tried to deny the AI copper and iron ressources but I had to deal with some spears and axes. Not much of a problem because I also produced a lot of HAs after I popped HBR.

As jesusin noted in the first spoiler in this low level games the goody huts are very "lucky" and I also would like to see them turned off (popped a worker and HBR).

Finished the game 780 AD, made some minor mistakes in the end but overall it was ok from my point of view.
 
I hadn't ever played at Warlord level or on this map type, so this was a fun game. My goal was conquest while researching the minimum number of techs. In addition to the starting techs, for me this was Mining, AH, and the Wheel, in that order. At that point I put the science slider to zero and I also avoided all goody huts to prevent myself from accidentally acquiring any more techs.

Settled in place, then settled a second city up by the horses to the NE. I had been planning on having those be my only settled cities and rounding out my empire with a couple captured capitals, but the Roman and Mali capitals were so lame I ended up razing them and building two more of my own cities.

I knew from my practice game that Mansa's skirmishers would be the biggest pain, and that was indeed the case. Rome fell in about 750 BC, followed by Mali, Egypt, France, and then Arabia and the Mongols. Finished in 880 AD.

Having so few techs really makes for a different game. Didn't build any improvements other than mines, farms, pastures and roads. No buildings but barracks. My total build list:

4 cities founded
4 barracks built
4 workers built (but 17 lost to barbs while road building to speed immortal movement!)
5 warriors built
117 immortals built (49 lost)
 
I played the test game that JungleIII posted in the pre-game thread and was lucky enough to pop 2 settlers within the first 7 turns right near home. So I was well aware of the possibilities of huts and their game-changing effects.
In the test, from that super-boost start of 3 cities at turn 7, I went on the rampage and slaughtered everyone by just into AD (I'm not the fastest at killing civs off).

Surely the real game would not be so pleasant.

However, my appetite had been whetted for a bloodbath, so I was duty bound to go for conquest again.

I quite quickly realised that we had been started in the south-west corner, fairly similar to the test. The scouts went off to scope out the area as quickly as possible. Obviously, the closest goody huts had been removed, but this didn't stop us from popping a tech around turn 15 and then a settler on turn 19. Only difference was they had to find their way home safely, which they did fairly easily.

By this time we knew Bronze Working, so were able to settle our 2nd city to get the copper.

Taking tips from the test game, I followed a strategy of attacking the most central civ first, followed by the top power civ each time. Meanwhile, I would attempt to ease the logistics of moving all of my military around the map by building a set of roads like spokes of a wheel, centering on that first captured capital in the middle. Research would take me to those early military techs: Bronze Working, Iron Working and Horse Riding, before moving on ahead to Construction and then being turned off for the remainder of the game.

It more-or-less worked out like that.

Julius Caesar was the first to be taken down, followed by Mansa Musa in the north west. He proved annoyingly tough to crack, however, until I could get my cats up to him. I also suffered the indignity of losing a captured Roman city to barbarians. (My policy was to keep capitals only, but I permitted myself to keep the occasional other city if it had good resources. I had kept Antium for gems and stone, but it wasn't the best idea)

There were horses up by Mansa, and iron too, as it turned out. I had to be able to use immortals now, didn't I?

Well, Mansa was gone but it had taken me as long to reach this stage as it had to finish the entire test game. 375 AD!

Hattie was next. Top of the AI civs on score and power. Also geographically nearest to my army, as she had spread from her north-east start along the northern edge.

It became clear that I was powerful enough to take her down and have another war at the same time, so I gathered forces at Rome in the centre of the map before declaring on Louis (centre-east) and started riding into his territory just as I was chasing Hattie along the top of the map.

780AD was a big year, as we took Memphis and Paris simultaneously. Two major cities gone.

The French were gone by 900AD, and then I sent all of the central military up to the north-east corner to help get rid of the last of the Egyptian cities. Hattie was gone by 1080 AD.

Now just Saladin and Genghis remained. I immediately went for Saladin, as my military was right by his cities and he was also powerful compared to the weakling Genghis. Not compared to me, however. I was able to cut through his cities with relative ease. The biggest problem was getting new troops across the whole width of the map - even with the road network I had carefully prepared.

Anyway, Saladin was mopped up by 1230 AD, and then it was only travelling distance that slowed down our final assault on Genghis and his mighty archers.

It all finished in 1300AD. I won't win any fastest conquest prizes. But I enjoyed both of these Christmas romps :)
 
This just about says it all::blush:

Spoiler :
Game status: Conquest Victory for Persia
Game date: 1160AD
Turns played: 176
Base score: 1836
Final score: 45700


Early game had me conquer Rome very early using axes, and Mansa reduced to one lame city by 500BC. Then about 1 thousand years fighting off barbs and building units for attack. My mistake of course was to take copper with my second city rather than take horses (which I had not yet discovered).

Had enough captured workers so the roads were all in place before my attacks, but I didn't get any real speed going until I started building knights. Obviously I went farther up the tech tree than most conquestors... If I ever try quick conquest again I think I need to consider that large quantity of tech inferior and cheap units could actually be faster than overwhelming everyone with superior units. But I didn't actually sacrifice much for doing the research, since I couldn't do anything with cash or culture anyhow...

Barb defense is very tedious business with raging barbs. That's what took all the Real Time in playing this game -- just moving units around to prevent pillaging. BOOOOORING. :wallbash:Wish there was a Great Wall in Vanilla.

Once I was ready to attack, I finished Mansa off and immediately declared on Hatty. Took her 3 biggest cities so quickly and with so few losses that the intended reinforcements went to DOW France instead. Ghenghis was last, but also least. One Keshik??? Is that all he could manage besides archers? The last 10 city razings were conducted without the help of siege units since they just couldn't keep up with the knights.

My goal of a BC military victory still eludes me. I feel inadequate. However, an all land/no water map is probably not the easiest way for me to get one, regardless of the level. Just too much space to cover. Damn... should have found those horses earlier.:hammer2:

I hope everyone else enjoyed this game more than I did. The raging barbs, while offering probably the only "difficulty" at this level, made the gameplay so tedious I got little pleasure from this game.

Enemy units spotted near Rome.
Enemy units spotted near Rome.
Enemy units spotted near Rome.
Enemy units spotted near Capitol.
Enemy units spotted near Capitol
Enemy units spotted near Capitol
Enemy units spotted near Timbuktu.
Enemy units spotted near Timbuktu.
Enemy units spotted near Timbuktu.
(ad infinitum)
 
I though with everyone else going for war I would try peace. In test games I popped a lot of settlers and was disappointed to only find one hut which didn't yield anything good.

I had a pretty good early diplo win but was significantly delayed when I let one of my better cities get taken by a barbarian I forgot about. Opps.

I also foolishly only saved one of my two early GEs to rush the UN. I expected to get another GE later in the game but of course this never happened.

I was unsure if Egypt or Mali would by my rival but in the end I was able to get them both happy with me and displeased with each other. At the end of teh game I attacked Rome and took several cites to ensure that I would win teh election. This ended up being overkill as I won easily.


I suspect fast spaceship at this level would actually be somewhat difficult as you can't use the AI for anything. I gave away a lot of tech as it was.
 
Goal: Fast Diplomacy win
Alternative: Culture

Approach: BeeLine to UN

Results: Slow Diplomacy win

No one close enough for me to rush. First bribed Caesar into war against Mansa with me. After I conquered MM, everyone was happy with Caesar and not me. And Caesar conquered Gaul (France). So, Caesar had to go.
Simultaneously was developing my first two cities and Timbuktu for the Cultural victory. Gave several of the French cities to Genghis to make him like me and to avoid a domination win (by area). But he still didn't vote for me and eventually I won the cheap diplomacy victory with my own population.
 
I went for Diplomacy also....Rexed out about 6 cities with no early wars. Teched quickly to MM and chopped UN.

The problem occurred when MM and Hatty kept changing positions as my opponent. The tricky part was that both liked me and everyone else (ALL AI's) shared the same religion and mostly loved each other. Eventually declared on both MM and Hatty (at different times though) and bribed other AI's to fight for the shared war bonus. Switched religions and and civics, took a couple of Hatty's cities so I knew was voting against MM (liked less by the AI overall) and got the Dilpo win in 1540AD. Not spectacular at this level for sure.
 
As I described in the 500 AD spoiler, I decided to play this game as peaceful as possible -- no declarations for any reason, no inciting AI-vs-AI conflicts, etc.

Managed to complete the game as a peaceful build-fest, with my only fighting being against the barbs. Only one war all game, with Saladin declaring on Louis and taking Paris plus Orleans. Louis got Paris back -- I had a unit nearby to watch, and after massive mutual slaughter Louis took the city with his final unit, a crossbow with 0.1 health left. :eek:

I took the entire west, with my land making a big slanting "L" shape from the far NW corner to Rome at the bend to the edge of the water in the middle south. Had 18 cities, and was generating just over 3000 beakers/turn by the end, slightly positive on gold at 100% science due to my shrines. Finished the last tech in the tree on the final turn, as the last space ship part was 3 hammers short and cost me one additional turn. :(

Space Race victory, 1810 AD. Not a particularly good finish date, as I wandered about the tech tree a bit in the mid game. The AIs were so backward that I researched everything myself -- only trades were at the start when I first teched Alpha, and filled in some starter techs. Mansa was the most advanced and just made SciMeth as I launched; Genghis was still missing Alpha as late as 1550 AD. :crazyeye:

It seems a lot of people had major pops from goody huts: settlers, significant techs, etc. I was exploring pretty widely with my starting scout, but only got some gold and some XP. Not important for the game I wanted to play, but at a low difficulty level like this maybe huts should be turned off.

I had a lot of fun with this game, smashing barbs early on and then settling into a total build fest. Thanks to the sponsors for an enjoyable game.
 
As a noob, this was a nice game which I enjoyed. Read the pre-game discussion, and I think it was haphazard1 that said something like it would be "largely a waste of the potential for the capital..." to just do a quick conquest {which I'm not particulary adept at anyway}. And, I had just suffered through a dismal defeat in an xOTM {certainly not to be mentioned here in this forum thread :eek: } where I tried to win my first space race ever, IIRC. So, with space race notes in hand ..., as I have said before, to a carpenter with a hammer in hand, every problem looks like a nail.

So, off to space I headed, fairly confident on the Warlord level. No records set here, but I made it into space for the first time {ever}, as far as I can recall, in any game I have ever played. So, hooray, one small step for this newb, and one large step for ... ?

I did learn that I didn't understand how hard it would be to find a suitable Great Person Farm on a plains map ... until after Biology, maybe. I also learned for the first time, that I could actually use the conversion of hammers to wealth (i.e., produce wealth in a city). Yeah, I know; I had just never utilized this valuable feature before. I also tried to learn a few more hot keys to use to speed up play (in Real Life time), again with a further reference to the NoMeInTeam article about playing faster. Tried to put nice shiny wooden parts into the space race where I could chop and affect production.

I did finish with a win around 1918 AD I think, which was a satisfactory finish for this QN (Quintessential Newbie). And I learned a lot.

Until next time,
Adama
 
Domination victory 1680.

I teched to chemistry while the AIs built cities for me. Then I wandered leisurely around the map anticlockwise... Genghis, Louis, Saladin, Hatty in that order. Could have finished plenty faster if I had split my stacks and attacked them all simultaneously (or just rushed with Xbows).
 
jesusin, contender. New goal, experimenting cultural hammer city. Result: I did ;)

Having read WastingTime's idea about "the hammer city" as one of the 3 Legendaries and having seen Gosha's 1AD BOTM11 save, fully civ-wide hammer oriented for a fantastic cultural date, I wanted to try it in one of my games. And since I don't play anything else apart from XOTM... this was the game to do it.



There was no 3 good sites for culture closeby. My plan included taking two AI capitals, but after having seen how poor their land was, I only killed JC (wiht Axes). That was a huge mistake, marble is mandatory in a fast-finishing cultural game. First thing I learnt.

So I used the capital (in place), the NE copper site with a few FP and the Gems site E.

As I was experimenting, I used Rome as a GPFarm and didn't make it Legendary, as I normally do. That meant going for 9 cities and buidling tons of temples. It was the wrong map to do so, my 3rd city was lacking, could have worked in another map.

CS sling T66, Academy T71.

1AD stats: 7cities, 178sust bpt, 15cottages, 2temples, OR+slav, 23GPPpt.

I researched fast, 100AD Liberalism after a detour to Music and another to Theology. That was a big mistake, hammers was the critical path of my game, not research, so I shouldn't have put all my effort into research. I remained in slavery+OR till 1000AD, I think I lost focus this part of the game, the additional time made me get my 5th religion (something I never do) so that put even more preassure on my hammer capacity.

1000AD started to run CS and Pacifism, so too few GAs. By then I had saved 4000g, which allowed me to run 100% culture for the rest of the game... and for 100 additional tunrs of my next game :blush:

The second city got Hermitage. It had built Oracle, Parthenon and a medieval WW, so it had the same culture output as the capital.
The third city was sad to look at.

1000AD: 8 cathedrals, 800cpt.

1100AD, 11cath.

1500AD 12 Cath, 1900cpt, PP researched.

1580AD WON

1GS for Academy, 1 stupid GPro for a silly shrine, 2GA settled, another 10 GA bombed (1-1-8). Not bad, having such a pitiful GPFarm and having started to grow GPs at 1000AD.



Conclusions:

- Want a faster cultural finish? Go grab Marble.

- The hammer city works. It can keep the pace with a capital as good as the one we had (with the help of Hermitage).

- Only if you have 3 outstanding cottage/hammer cities, go for 9 cities and don't make your GPFarm Legendary.

- Go for 4 religions if you only lack the resource for 1 of the cathedrals. Go for 5 religions only if you have all the resources for cathedrals.

Quite akward game, lots of important strategic mistakes, I've learnt a lot :)
 
jesusin, can you elaborate on the "cultural hammer city" or give a pointer to the proper thread? Thanks.
 
jesusin, can you elaborate on the "cultural hammer city" or give a pointer to the proper thread? Thanks.

No thread dedicated to that, just a mention in the 1000AD HOF thread.

The idea is, one city with food and lots of hills can be used as a Legendary city, even if not working many cottages. It can build a lot of WW and buildings. The early ones will get double culture after 1000 years, so the base culture of an early WW can be worth 2 or 3 towns. The city can build the cathedrals easily too.

The BOTM in which the Gauntlet victory condition was culture and BOTM11 Gosha's game demonstrate that it can be very good in the low-medium levels of diffficulty.
 
Cultural win, 1874.

Decided my three legendary city sites would be the capital, on the river east of the capital (north of the copper) and NE of the capital on the outside of the next river (no special resources at all in the city radius, but plenty of floodplain/grassland). All better for cottages than GP farming, so I put my GP farm even further east on the south river, but didn't have it running properly until about 1600 (National Epic, Globe Theatre). Way too late, although I think I got 3 GAs out of it.

I probably should have expanded faster than I did--my 9th city (and I needed 9, since I didn't have a legendary GP farm) wasn't added until around 1000 AD if I remember correctly. It was a badly located barb city that revolted and joined my empire.

Researched Liberalism in 1020, and also had machinery. Founded 3 religions by this point (Judaism, Confucianism, Taoism), and had copper and stone for fast cathedrals. I didn't bother to go after Christianity or Islam (could have gone for Christianity too because I had stone, but oh well). By this point I had one cathedral in each legendary city, so I was only at about 150 cpt.

Mansa Musa invaded in 1570. I didn't have engineering, so it was my maces and spears against his knights. I got Caesar and Louis to declare war and then backed out by giving Mansa liberalism for peace.

I eventually got Buddhism as well and spread it around for a fourth cheap cathedral in each legendary city.

Maxed out around 500-600 cpt in each legendary city. Health limited my legendary cities to 16 pop max. By the end, it was unnerving looking at Mansa's riflemen, next to my musketeers and knights.
 
Cultural win...
...so I put my GP farm even further east on the south river, but didn't have it running properly until about 1600 (National Epic, Globe Theatre).

Why Globe? Not for happines probably since you had already raised the cultural slider by then. Because of the artist slots maybe? Wheren't you running CasteSystem?
 
Why Globe? Not for happines probably since you had already raised the cultural slider by then. Because of the artist slots maybe? Wheren't you running CasteSystem?

No, I was running slavery so I could whip temples, so added the Globe to get extra artists. But you're right, caste system would be much better in that regard. I will store that in memory for a future attempt to reach cultural victory perhaps only one century slower than people who are actually good at it.:p

It really wasn't a good map to go for cultural victory, but I sure learned a lot with the attempt.
 
As I said in the first spoiler I made many mistakes and often found myself wishing I could take back decisions I made.

I founded more religions (5) than I needed simply because the AI was so slow I would notice a religion available and grab it. With the mostly poor hammer cities I had selected as my legendary cities because of the number of cottages I could run I couldn't get the cathedrals built fast enough for them to be a big help.

As jesusin did, in a game of lower difficulty where it is relatively easy to build lots of wonders if you have a hammer rich city, I should have gone for at least 1 city using wonder culture as its main source instead of cottages.

The one thing I felt I did a (mostly) good job of was my GP farm which I set up west of the capital early on, stealing the corn flood plain from the capital, a wheat, and a few FPs. I had a total of 10 cities so the GP farm could concentrate on its job without worrying about temples. My big mistake was waiting too long (on accident) for Pacifism instead of Organized Religion. Still I settled 5 early GAs (probably 1 too many) and bombed 9 at the end (6 Rome, 3 in capital).

My biggest mistake was not adapting to the land which was mostly missing high food tiles. I finished with a disappointing 1670 AD culture win.
 
... my GP farm which I set up west of the capital early on, stealing the corn flood plain from the capital, a wheat, and a few FPs.

Wow! :goodjob: CornFP for the capital while it is growing and producing settlers, then for the GPFarm when it is ready and the capital is just working cottages!

Of course! That's what I should have done, instead of whining all game long "I don't have a good GPFarm, I don't have a good GPFarm".:blush:
 
Top Bottom