GOTM 40: First Spoiler

[Markus5]

Conquest game. (I should have done open game.)

4000bc Move Settler N. Start mine and road.
3400bc Pottery complete. Writing started.
2750bc Sparta founded. Building Colossus for now.
1990bc Writing complete. Map Making started.
1830bc Thermopyle founded.
1425bc Corinth founded.
1275bc Sparta completes Colossus.
1225bc Map Making complete. Iron Working started. Sparta is building a galley.
1100bc Galley complete. Loaded with settler and warrior. Heads SE. Build on wine island?
1050bc Iron Working complete. Start Philosophy. Head for Republic. Iron on another island.
1000bc Save game. A ring of island cities. Get to mainland ASAP. Wandering galley needs to settle.
950bc Delphi founded on wine island.
925bc First sign of the raging barbarians. 4 galleys.
825bc Pharsalos founded on larger eastern island. Barbarian village on the island.
730bc The barbarian islands!
650bc Knossos founded on larger eastern island. Barbarian village has needed gold.
630bc Code of Laws complete. Republic started.
Various. Building island cities. Sending extra galleys exploring.
390bc Lost 2 galleys in treacherous waters.
330bc Lost another galley.
190bc Republic. Revolt? Not much point. Research C. Burial. Revolted anyway.
170bc Still anarchy.
150bc Still anarchy.
130bc Still anarchy.
110bc Republic.
90bc Galley reaches land.
70bc And the galley was lost. But, Persia can be contacted. Not much to trade. World map for C. Burial + 12g.
90ad Lost another galley. Still researching the early techs.
110ad Lost another galley.
260ad Lost another galley.
340ad Lost another galley.
360ad Lost another galley.
400ad Lost another galley.
420ad Lost two more galleys.
430ad Persians demand tribute. Get bent I say. They declare war. Hmmph. Try to cross the pond. Barbarian galleys are massing in the west.
440ad Lost two more galleys. Save game.

 

[Banthafodder]

There is something strange in the water to the far north above the Barbs. near the coast of the perma-frost. When I look at that square closely it looks like some sort of resource and it says free. What is this? I'm at work right now so I can't send a screen shot. Does anyone else have this?
I'm not sure if I can mention this or not??

 

[denyd]

Alexander woke from his slumber to find himself surprisingly in a very loving mood. Little did he know that the colony ship crew had celebrated Saint Valentines Day by piping love songs throughout the ship during the final week of the journey from Alpha Centauri to the new world.

“Nothing special about the location” he thought as he gazed from the view port of his stasis pod. A nice stream, fish and in the distance wild grapes, “We’ll settle over by the river. Have the workers begin mining this land and let’s get an exploring warrior out as soon as possible” were his first orders. “We’ll need pottery regardless if this is a small island or a large continent” so research was maximized to that goal.

The first three thousand years of his reign had been very peaceful. Most of the available lands had been improved and his fourth city was about to be founded. His island was not very big, though he could see other lands from the coast, he knew that he was going to soon need ships to cross the deeper water. His scientists had been plodding along, discovering only pottery and writing. His one major accomplishment, The Colossus of Sparta would soon be complete.

With the discovery of Map Making, Greek sailors began the colonization of the local islands, while Athens began construction of the Great Lighthouse. News from afar had given notice that the Persians had completed the Oracle (whatever that was), so at least one other nation was in the wonder building business. The completion of the Great Lighthouse set off a cascade of wonder completion (Carthage for the Pyramids & Zulus for the Great Wall).

With the aid of the Great Lighthouse, nine additional Greek cities had been founded, but still no other nation had been met. As the Greek sailors had completed exploring all of the safe passages, Alexander was left with no option but to risk his explorers on dangerous expeditions to the open oceans.

The addition of libraries in most of the Greek cities had begun to impact the research rate and with the discovery of The Republic in 280 AD, Greece left despotism behind. In the preceding year the first successful galley returned news of other tribes on the planet. However, they were advanced beyond Alexander’s people and saw no trade possibilities. Just when Alexander feared he might be forced to develop a military beyond the current one Hoplite per city, his galley met another nation and to his fortune found himself in the position of being able to deal The Republic for five needed technologies and contact with another tribe. His world map and some of his treasury would soon allow Greece to attain technological parity and enter the Middle Ages in 320 AD.

When he first landed on this new world Alexander had sought a peaceful path to glory and with the lack of sufficient lands for a cultural victory, diplomacy would be his goal. He was determined to follow a lifestyle of peace and love if at all possible.

 

[Denniz]

Horz moves are 1, diagional are 1 1/2. So two of your cities are at 4 unless I'm looking wrong. And I may be looking wrong.

No, you were looking right. I pretty much messed up the rcp on the northern ones. I think I was aware of it at the time, I just didn't look too close when I was doing the writeup. Do do this at home, kids.

 

[Denniz]

Just curious how the best way to add attachments is? I've cut my screenshots and got them down to smaller sizes but this site won't allow me to attach anything greater than 0.5 MB. Any suggestions?

Even .5MB is pretty big. Try saving as JPG for your images.

In any case, at the bottom of the page is a link: "Upload File". Upload each of your files. It tells you the current path (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/) which changes every couple months.

Then use the "insert image" button to insert your picture where you want it.
My picture below was "{IMG}http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/cntl.JPG{/IMG}" with the "{" & "}" replaced with "[" & "]", of course.

It is always a good idea to preview to make sure you typed it in right. It's very case sensitive.

Good luck.

 

[MOTH]

@Gato Loco and Tubby Rower,
both of your spoilers have references to Suicide Galley routes. You should edit out these references. More likely, the staff will beat you to this now that someone points it out.

 

[Tubby Rower]

@MOTH & ainwood, sorry, I didn't realize that they were there. I was just keeping notes and tried to get all of the references to the other continents out of my wirte up. I guess I've been working too hard and I didn't think that the suicide galley had anything to do with the other continents

 

[Redbad]

My location is excellent for the Ancient and Medieval Eras but it has less future potential. Rails and sanitation will bring it up to about 30 SPT. Hopefully it'll be thirty. Certainly no more.

That's a bit pessimistic. Your capitol location has 14 workable landtiles and one coastal fishtile. The fourteen landtiles consist of 6 bg's, 4 plains and 4 grass. With the extra food from the citycenter and the fish all the plaintiles can be mined. So with all landtiles mined and railroaded we get (6 + 4) * 3 plus 4 *2 plus citycenter gives 39 shields. There will be one shield lost due to corruption, but in all still 38 shields, which can be doubled with a factory and coalplant.

So I expect the city to be still reasonable productive in the later ages, but I grant you it won't be excellent.

 

[Abegweit]

I'd forgotten about how the extra food would make it possible to mine the plains. Thanks. This is good news.

 

[Puppeteer]

This is from memory since I've been out of town a few days, but I stopped just after reaching MA, anyway, so I won't spoil past there.

It's been a year or so since I played much. I decided just to play by the seat of my pants and see what happens.

I didn't beeline for mapmaking; I knew there were raging barbs so I think I started researching archer for offensive defense. I moved 1 tile NW to get coast/river. I think I had the worker build a road and then start improving BG on the river, but I may be mistaken. Made two or three warriors and then a settler.

By the time the settler came I knew I was isolated on a small island and needed to beeline for mapmaking fast. I remembered the line about the luck of the gods and thought suicide galleys may be necessary; therefore I'll probably be alone on this island for a long time. I'm commercial and have hoplites, so I decided to focus on commerce (=research) by not using more of Athens' population (whipping or settler/worker building), working as many river tiles as possible and building only hoplites to maximize defensive explorers while keeping maintenance to a minimum. (I later made a few more warriors anyway due to build timing issues but ultimately disbanded all that weren't holding 1- or 2-tile islands.)

So I settled and improved to maximize the river commerce and only slowly added cities. I built Colossus in Athens to speed commerce. I had a prebuild for a galley with a couple of hoplites at the ready, and I short-whipped (sorry Athens) another galley for fast exploration. They were well on their way exploring before the first barb galleys came from the other direction.

It soon became clear that I was more isolated than I thought; not a hint of hope around. I'm not usually a wonder builder, and I had already built the Colossus out of character for me, but it occurs to me the Great Lighthouse is darn near necessary in this game so I belatedly start building it and hope against hope that I'll get it. Somehow I got it.

Even with the GLH and 5 galleys I had no whiff of another civ, so I had to trust the gods and brave the dangerous expanse of the ocean.

By the way, I kept researching at a fast rate but was picking cheap techs; I kept thinking I would meet someone soon and wheel and deal my way up the tech tree. If nothing else my vast maps would net some techs from each civ--or so I thought. I never built libraries; I didn't research literature, and I'm not sure it was one of the traded techs. I managed to keep up in sci with careful commerce planning and Colossus.

I finally found the Persians. I even had a tech he didn't, and he traded me a small time tech and contact with another civ. They did the same, and I established embasies with each of them to find their capitals. I knew their world so I kept exploring for the rest. Finally found them and tech traded my way into the middle ages.

I never even sold my maps! I still have that bargain chip, and since I have the GLH I have a huge advantage in the middle ages.

I'm still stuck on my small collection of islands, though. I'm keeping up fairly well in commerce and research, but it's only a matter of time my island is outclassed. I'm plotting devious ways of getting a leader and rushing an FP somewhere--again, using the Greek advantage. You heard of a spearman on a mountain against tanks? How 'bout a few hoplites on a mountain against MDI?


I don't need to research anymore, and I probably won't since I have an incredible advantage until Navigation/Magnetism. The next phase is to colonize another island; preferably one with good resources.

I'll post a screenshot and my QSC summary later. I don't recall when I got Republic, but I was there before MA of course. When I start a war I'll probably have to pay through the nose to end it since I'm so small and sparsely defended (aside from the unpassable ocean and my sea-squatting galleys), so I'll have to plan carefully how I can buy my peace before I start a "war".

By the way, the barbs haven't set foot on my lands yet. I'm surprised. Good thing, because they could pillage a few squares before I'd be ready to counter-attack. I had galleys on guard, but I'm a bit galley light after searching for the continents.

EDIT: Oracle -> Colossus. See? I build wonders so infrequently I forget which is which. I built the moneymaker. Also, it appears I went for horses first as I am researching archers in my 1000BC save.

EDIT 2: Playing Open class, PTW final patch

 

[AdrianE]

My opening was much like Denyd's as I based my intial plan on his pregame comments.

I researched pottery first and made a beeline for mapmaking as fast as I could. The first galleys let me settle the local islands. Production would be an issue as we are shield poor but cash rich. I then got to republic for the money so I could rush stuff. Cash bearing improvements recieved priority in the build queue.

Suicide galleys let me contact the Egypt - Zulu - Babylonians who were backwards compared to me. Still in the ancient times another galley contacted the other continent. I kept the two continents isolated for a long time.

Sparta built the collosus and the great lighthouse. I missed the great library by 4 turns. I even tried a subtle sabotage of the builder by trading them a government tech so that they revolted and lost production turns. However it didn't work.

I decided to invade the other continent and mass produced galleys and vet warriors for upgrade. The idea being to send out empty galleys and then transfer troops to them when (if) they survive. I learned this tactic in a SGOTM game. It is very expensive but I had nothing else to do.

The actual invasion happened in the early middle ages so more on that another time.

 

[Puppeteer]

Long-winded recap earlier. Here are some details from save files and a couple of screenshots.

At 1000BC: 4 cities, MM & pre-req, Bronze, Horses, Ceremonial Burial and 1 turn away from Warrior Code. 3 Galleys, 4 hoplite, 6 warrior, 3 worker (!). 10 total pop. Colossus in Athens. Two settlers, a galley and a warrior in production.

One or two turns into MA, 260 A.D: 8 cities, 3 galleys, 12 hoplite, 3 warrior, 3 worker (!). 40 total pop. Added GLH in Athens. Contact w/all civs and have all their maps yet haven't given mine up. Got engineering as my free tech. 3 civs still in Ancient Age.

EDIT: Construction was one of the last techs I traded for. After looking at my saves I think I have a few aqueducts to start building!

EDIT 2: Open class, PTW final patch.

 

[Gato Loco]

OK, my description of the suicide galley route is removed. I hope there aren't any other spoilers remaining.

 

[voe]

After a space race in COTm 09 I decided I would try a more violent approach. My AA was however rather uneventfull, building up the starting lands and getting a good scientific base as there was not much else to do. I entered the MA in 290 drawing one turn anarchy in the process (that was about the only luck I woud have in this game

Towns: Athens 3950 BC NW of start position. Warrior is 3700, a granary in 2950, from then on mostly settlers
2630 Sparta
2390 Thermopylae
1910 Corinth
1600 Delphi
1325 Pharsalos
1150 Knossos (wine)
950 Argos
330 Mycenae

Research
Self-Researched
3250 pottery
1910 Writing
1425 MapMaking
1025 Literature
875 Philo (mistake , thought that It would give me a free tech but this is not C3C  )
690 CoL
290 Republic
Traded
550 CB from Carthage
530 IW, HB from Rome
290 Constr, Currency from Carthage if remembered correctly

Galleys
After MM we send out some ships to explore . these did not fare well As long as they could hug te coast they were OK and we settled some of the surrounding islands. Venturing out proved different
Galleys were lost in 1075, 975, 925 (TWO!!) 850(carrying a settler ) before finally meeting other civs. Many more would be lost later.

Buildings
Athens: Granary (2950), Library (690)
Sparta Granary (1575), harbor(825), Library (690)
Thermo barracks (1870)
Knossos Harbor 430 (pop rushed)

Wonders
Oracle Babylonians 775
Collosus babylon 310

So, Not to many cities, only a couple of civs met, apparantly wel up in the tech race, but in no position to start early agression. Losing the galley with the settler really hurt. I think I did not manage my military police very well, as especially between 1500-1000 I had to play the lux slider quite a bit preventing riots, this slowed research a bit. The babylonians so far seem to be ahead of the pack.

 

[GomJabbar]

Newbie here,

Ok, next time I'm actually going to recored my progress report.

In AA, I made several mistakes (which really didn't turn out too bad). First I only had 3 cities on the main island instead of trying to fit in more. Really only 2 of the cites were good producers because 1 went south to claim the 2 fish. The good thing about my 2 producers is that they had a lot of long term production capabilities, instead of spreading it out as what most people did. My city to the south that took the fish did manage to pop out the collosus, which made that city very wealthy.

Another mistake was my misunderstanding of resources. I thought that building a road on a resource, or building a colony would be enough to be able to use it. I had to abandon and reposition 2 cites as a result to actually put them on the resources to use them.

Yet another mistake, though perhaps not a bad thing, is that i went for the republic slingshot after first hitting map making. Philosophy doesn't give an extra tech as it does in Conquest. I was still researching Republic when I meet the persians, and within a few turns i had all contacts, then finished Republic. I turned around and traded for all AA techs, and even some cash per turn.

At the end of AA I decided to go for diplomacy victory, because everyone was already happy for me for all of the trading, that just seemed like the quickest route.

 

[Xevious]

PTW 1.27
Predator

This is only my second completed game in many months, and I did worse in this game than COTM9. I think this was largely due to my late contact and then deciding to just stay on my own continent + islands.

My initial moves including scouting with the worker AND the settler. I ended up moving the settler 3 times and settling N of start position. A waste of 2 turns, but I think I assured myself of the best position for this map rather than lucking into it. I was able to build RCP 2 and 5 rings from this position.

Towns:
3850BC Athens
2270BC Sparta
2030BC Thermopylae
1575BC Corinth
1325BC Delphi
1275BC Pharsalos
1100BC Knossos on wine island

1000BC QSC end

875BC Argos
750BC Mycenae
550BC Plebos Nexia
550BC Herakleia on large SE island
530BC Qitaiodea on large SE island
430BC Brempalonica
430BC Ephesus
410BC Thessalonica
10AD Rhodes
10AD Eretria
10AD Troy
130AD Marathon
230AD Halicarnassus

360AD Dawn of Middle Ages

Technology:
3200BC Pottery
2070BC Writing
1375BC Map Making
1050BC Literature
825BC Code of Laws
710BC Philosophy
370BC Republic - 4 turn anarchy
270BC Ceremonial Burial
190BC Masonry
110BC Wheel
30BC Iron Working
50AD Math
130AD Construction
210AD Currency
270AD Mysticism
310AD Polytheism
350AD Warrior Code - finally meet someone this turn.
360AD Horseback Riding from Arabia.
360AD Monotheism free
360AD Feudalism from Persia

So as you can see I had a VERY late Middle Ages date. I think I should have sent more suicide galleys than I did. I also think I should have waited to research Literature until AFTER Republic. I spent 13 turns on Literature, and would have only spent 4 after Republic. Once I had Republic I made scientists when necessary to eke out 4 turn research for the rest of Ancient Age.

I ended up playing a builder game. Once the land was developed (including the few tiles of islands that weren't settled) I started joing workers back into towns. My military was basically nonexistant after I became Republic since no need for MPs any more. At this point I knew it was unlikely I was going to get a great date at anything so I decided to fall back on the old standby of Diplomacy.

 

[Xevious]

Another mistake was my misunderstanding of resources. I thought that building a road on a resource, or building a colony would be enough to be able to use it. I had to abandon and reposition 2 cites as a result to actually put them on the resources to use them.

It's not just a road or colony on the resource. It has to be connected (i.e. a road FROM the resource or colony TO a city). The resource has to be inside your borders and connected to your capital for all cities on your trade network to use it. A colony that is connected to your capital is also ok. If you have a resource connected to one or more cities, but not the capital than only those cities have access to it. In this game, the wines are only connected to the city founded on them until you have a harbor in that city AND on your main island (connected to the capital by road).

 

[Puppeteer]

Ok, next time I'm actually going to recored my progress report.

Time consuming, but I found it extremely helpful when I did it a couple of times up until 1000 BC. You can look back and see where you changed your mind and possibly wasted time or resources. And after counting a few "oops! disorder" entries I was more careful to check happiness before ending a turn.

Another mistake was my misunderstanding of resources. I thought that building a road on a resource, or building a colony would be enough to be able to use it. I had to abandon and reposition 2 cites as a result to actually put them on the resources to use them.

If the resource is inside your cultural borders you don't need a colony, but you do need a road on the resource and connected road to cities where you want to use the resource. In the early game after improving a couple of tiles I look ahead and try to keep my cities connected with roads. This eases defending them and means that they all get to use resources connected to that road network.

Also, in this game you have a couple of resources not on your main island. To connect those resources (like the luxury/happy grapes), you need to build a city on the grape island, road the grape (well, in this case the island is so small you can't help but plop a city on grapes, and a road comes free with the city), and then you have to build a harbor on the grape island and your main island to connect those harbor cities to the same trade/road network. Note that harbors can only be connected by coastal squares until late MA techs when sea and then ocean squares can connect them.

Also, having a city connected via road/harbor/airport (a trade network) to the palace city reduces corruption. To trade resources with other civs you have to have your palace city and their palace city connected by a trade network (road/harbor/airport).

EDIT: My long-winded reply cross-posted with Xevious. By the way, I have my own question: What are the 3 numbers on the status display? Like in "Greece - Republic (5.3.2)". I figure I must've known that before, but I can't recall clue one about what they mean.

 

[GomJabbar]

What are the 3 numbers on the status display? Like in "Greece - Republic (5.3.2)". I figure I must've known that before, but I can't recall clue one about what they mean.

Heck even i know that.

It's your resource investment split, 50% sci, 30% cash, 20%lux. (might have the cash/lux reversed, not at home right now so can't verify.

 

[Xerol]

Actually you have cash/sci reversed.

I would post a spoiler, except my records are kinda skewed a bit, and I got the lighthouse so that invalidates any screens I took.