GOTM 43 Final Spoiler

[masked_zorro]

Was it too easy for an Immortal game? Isn't Inca your favourite civ now? Is there something you have learnt and you'd like to share?

Certainly easier than last months "Emperor" I think we should see some super high scoring domination wins from those who count tiles and realize early on that just the starting continent is enough for a domination win.

I was planning on a domination/back door diplo at 0 AD. The great territory with plenty of gold, happiness, health lead to a very good tech pace, especially when collaborating with Mansa. Too bad I had to cripple him in the early ADs. Saladin was backward from the beginning of course. Took Astro from Liberalism and prepared a bunch of Galleons for an across the seas invasion if needed. I thought that at least 1 tile would be required and maybe 2, especially after I saw the 1 tile island in the middle of the ocean. I also teched Chemistry->Steel for Grenadiers+Cannons to have a really quick war overseas. The maces/cats/elephants were wiping out MM and Saladin in the meanwhile. I realized however when the tile count was shown by the HoF mod as I got close to domination, that nothing more than the starting continent would be required. Grenadiers could never see any action and not a single cannon was built More than just having great territory, the bad territory for the other AIs (except Mansa, Washington) lead to a rather easy win, but I'm not complaining

I had a power outage at 665 AD, 1256 AD - so not sure if my game will be accepted. I replayed from the last turn auto save of course. Do I need to notify somebody or is this post enough? (In a previous GOTM, I sent a PM to Ainwood, but it turned out then that I hadn't resumed from the last turn auto save (despite claiming to have done so) and auto save period was set at 4 turns However, this time it was set at 1 turn, but not so sure if my credibility is still intact ).

 

[BakeliteRules]

As this was my first immortal game attempt, glad it was considered "easy" by you pros. Still learning game mechanics so enjoyed stretching my abilities. I did have an unexpected domination win in 1601AD and had I been paying any attention that could have been a couple centuries earlier. After a quick "noobie luck" steal of 3 workers, quick kill of Washy, 600 Gold from lost Pyrimid to upgrade to promoted Axe, I had taken Mali by 50AD. I goofed around working on infastructure for several hundred years when I should have just taken out Sally. Playing with barbs and finally starting to explore the world I hit diplo win in 1601AD. Thought I needed to build Infra or it would have been over much earlier. First Immortal gane I have played. Yey!

 

[PaulisKhan]

I messed this one up. I've never won on Immortal, but that didn't really matter. I founded Cuzco 2N, took Washington immediately, and decided to risk it and rush the skirmishers, which was admittedly stupid since I've never rushed them before. 6 Q, 3 of them Com/Cov/CR1 against two skirmishers, and I lost them all without killing one. Anyway, I quit in the mid-to-late 2000's BC.

Yeah, these things can be rough mate. I'm afraid to count up the number of HoF games I've abandoned because of failed Mansa rushes. I feel your pain =(

 

[llaauuf]

AD 1762 adventurer class domination win.

Will I ever learn to check the victory screen?!

It just happened without me having a clue. I was setting myself for a guarranteed spacerace. Researching electricity, having triggered a golden era a turn before the end I was really enjoying micromanaging my cities when all of a sudden I won by domination

Well, at least my very first GOTM ends in a victory. I must say I'm quite happy with my gameplay and most importantly had a lot of fun. Surely this could have been played more efficiently on my part (why on earth didn't I generate a Great Prophet having founded a religion? ok, I needed scientists too, but still...) , perhaps learning to play a proper early rush would have made the game a heck of a lot easier. Or perhaps not - I feel that recovering from broken economy is another gap in my game. I just have to keep the finances right, can't help it.

At 1AD threshold I had only 5 cities with quite an infrastructure though, but I think others entries will show that having 10 underdeveloped cities at the same point will have led to earlier victories.

Summing up, just playing/watching this one, and reading your entries gave me a lot of areas that my game could improve in. That aside I still enjoyed playing it immensely. Thanks

 

[jesusin]

I had a power outage at 665 AD, 1256 AD - so not sure if my game will be accepted. I replayed from the last turn auto save of course. Do I need to notify somebody or is this post enough? (In a previous GOTM, I sent a PM to Ainwood, but it turned out then that I hadn't resumed from the last turn auto save (despite claiming to have done so) and auto save period was set at 4 turns However, this time it was set at 1 turn, but not so sure if my credibility is still intact ).

The best thing to do is to send a PM to the map creator or to AlanH. Please describe what was going on in your game at the time.

These things happen, if you had autosave=1 and you replayed the turn exactly as the first time you don't need to worry, your game will be accepted.

 

[jesusin]

Well, at least my very first GOTM ends in a victory.

Welcome to Civfanatics!


Thanks for writing about your game. Each post we write make the GOTM experience more enjoyable for others.

 

[llaauuf]

Welcome to Civfanatics! /.../

Thanks for writing about your game. Each post we write make the GOTM experience more enjoyable for others.

You're welcome. I can write about my games endlessly, so encouraging me is rather risky The trouble is I didn't record properly (no screenshots at all) what was happening as I didn't think of posting a story here.

One thing about taking adventurer save: I know some folks that would have never taken it because they would consider it a bit lame. And I know some that took contender or even challenger in the past games, lost and never tried GOTM again.. Well, at the moment I'm struggling on emperor (vanilla, standard continents, normal speed, no options). If that's the case why would I take immortal on? Have fun people! That's my attitude, anyway

Awaiting next GOTM already...

thx

 

[Deckhand]

Adventurer save. Quencha rushed Washington and New York. Tried to block Mansa and Saladin off from East, but they each captured barbarian cities on east coast. Won liberalism race. Conquered Mansa with Catapults and War Elephants (and some macemen). Conquered Saladin with Cavalry etc. Domination win 1586. After losing the last several XOTMs went Adventurer/Monarch for the easy win.

 

[titanvol]

Allow me to join the ranks of those who did not realize the starting continent was enough for domination.

I settled 2N, took out America by capturing their capitol & only city, stealing 3 workers (2 workers & a settler) in the process

Used workers to chop barracks while growing in Cuzco.

Rushed MM, taking capitol & Djenne (fp/gold) & leaving him one city so I could repair our relations & trade techs.

Took out Saladin w/ Axes

Stopped expansion to allow economy to recover, this was painful as I avoided CoL to allow GS to pop optics & astronomy. When I found everyone I was looking at the VIctory screen & realized my pop / land + Alex's pop / land = domination; then I thought, well I wont need to take out Alex, the largest most powerful civ because I still have unsettled land on my continent & I can take over MM pitiful civ since he is no longer needed, then I realized I didnt need to take out anyone except MM & fill up my continent. I could have achieved dom ages ago. Finished expanding & wiped out MM, then irrigated all of my cottages & worked only food tiles to keep growing until dom in 1466 AD for a score of 3828

 

[Lexad]

A standard quechua-rush followed by getting my empire from debt pit and reaching pop-dom-limit ages after I could've reached territory limit.

 

[Charonicus]

I didn't fare so well on this one. Is it just me or is Mansa dead set against peace?
Anyways. I pumped out nothing but quechas even though my rushing skills need major work. I dunno how you all managed a huge army so quickly. I dowed early on to try and terrorize both Washington and Mansa but it had just ticked by 2000BC when I really went for it with a stack. I took Washington's capital and a city from Mansa. Washington begged for peace and figuring Mansa was the bigger threat I accepted and turned my focus on the Malinese. I took three more cities off Mansa and then tried for peace but he was having none of it. I built chariots while my workers improved all the land around my new conquests but I was woefully behind in techs and my economy was struggling. I tried to take a barb city nearby but my stack of chariots were minced by the archers (lucky gits). Mansa snuck another city near me so I conquered it (auto-raze at pop 1). I was struggling to tech anything decent and was having to escort workers around with chariots to stop Mansa's axemen raids. I got some archers in my new cities and Mansa kept sending in catapults to harass them. Seems catapults are pretty good at killing chariots and then pillaging all the improvements.
I kept going, hoping to catch up. Saladin declared on Mansa and I was hoping that would help me out but as I started producing Longbowmen Mansa sent a bunch of knights at me and set about reclaiming all the cities I'd fought so hard for.
He took two of the cities back and then Alexander turned up from the other continent with so much firepower that I didn't stand a chance. I retired at that point.
And this was on the adventurer save. >_< Bit out of my league I'm afraid. Good fun though, definitely.

 

[nokem]

I took the adventurer save as I don't have much time to play this month. I hurried through the game and finished with a messy domination win sometime in the 1700s IIRC.

Jesusin's intro made it clear that a rush was on so I decided not to. Firstly I have a compulsion to defy authority ;-) and more importantly I couldn't see the value: Washington's capital was ok but not outstanding; Mansa was better kept alive for trading; Saladin was too far away; and a single blocking city could secure the whole eastern half of the continent.

I built a single quecha first up to try for a worker steal then followed a classic rex path. I let Washington settle the floodplains and gold cities along the river then took them with catapults. At this point I could have continued the assault and cleaned up the continent for an early dom win but I didn't realise it was possible without overseas territory.

I was lazy. I didn't build any wonders except the Great Library. I ran specialist / hammer economy which wasn't ideal but good enough to secure Liberalism. Once representation was available I easily outpaced the AI and blitzed the rest of the continent with cavalry. I was busy building galleons and rifles when I was surprised by the victory screen. I suspect the quickest win will be at least 1000 years earlier.

 

[Thorrez]

Dead at around 470AD.

Took Washington without problems and NY NW by the stone but decided to leave Mansa for trades/avoid sks. Bad chioce as he dowed (NY providing negative close borders might have been the key). Manage to hook up the copper with a city to the E but the only way to get peace was to give it to him so the next time he dowed it was over.

Replay: Instead of leaving Mansa I took his worker and made sure to pillage his horses. This had the posetive side effect of Washington settling the FP/Gold site so it was a sitting duck. Still gave up the first game as 9 attacking Qs left 2 alive sks. Replayed again and no problem to dominate the continent this time. I didn't relized the hoem continent was enough to domination (I left Sal and Mansa alive to beeline Astronomy to get some land over see before I was to take all of the home land, I have Montys island at the moment but probably wont finish due to RL). Knowing this and the fact that the rush is easy if executed properly we shoudl see some very early finishes.

As always: Lessons learn:
Playing only vanilla GOTM and possibly a short pratice game or two a month does not keep your playing skills up to date

 

[Teddy Slavic]

Spaceship loss to Mansa, 1899 AD

My biggest mistake was building worker first. After killing Wash away (it yields 2 cities and 3 additional workers) it appears that Mansa already has axes. Of course, it was necessary to get rid of him in classical or medieval, because in modern ages his armies were nothing to oppose... second mistake. And my third mistake was delaying in settling - so I had only 6 cities on our continent most of the time (later founded 7th), while Mansa founded three "unnecessary" cities on Inca's northern and eastern borders.

Was first on Liber, took Astronomy, killed Peter and Isabella for additional "life space" and health resources. Indian civ was destroyed much early before I met Alex, so Greeks were the 3rd civ in points and teching all the rest time - behind Mansa and Incas. Alex declared on me twice, both cases were mostly naval wars - Alex landed very small armies which were destroyed in turn, I didn't want to prepare any landing cause of Alex's great power and technological races with Mali. Nevertheless, when Mansa built the last SS component, it remained about 15 turns for Incas to complete it's SS.

 

[Teddy KGB]

Contender. 1262AD Domination win. Score: 150’825.

Settled N-N, grow to pop.3, and built barracks first.

Wars with Washington:

• 3160BC-2920BC: +1 Worker.
• 2740BC-2560BC: Captured Washington (turn44), NY (t48). +1 W, -2 Quechua. Civ destroyed.

Wars with MM:

• 2380BC-2200BC: Captured Timbuktu (t55). +1 W, -1 Q.
  MM adopts slavery already, but same time he produced settler and had to escort him. So Timbuktu left with single defender. I did wait one turn and DoW with 6Q. Next turn was still single defender in Timbuktu and I did capture it with only one Quechua lost. There is a Horse Pasture and MM was quick enough to built chariot in his 2nd city.
• 2140BC-1960BC: Captured Djenne aka GoldCity(t63). +1 W, -3 Q.
  Lost two Quechua while fighting chariot outside city. City captured and it becomes capital and SSC later. As for MM, I let him keep one last city to provide me with workers, unit’s xp and blocking Saladin. My economy was near to collapse anyway.
• 1240BC-1060BC: +1 W.
  Just keep MM in the Stone Age.
• 775BC-505BC: +1W.
  I discovered Alphabet (580BC) in case MM willing to trade some tech for peace. Although he has some good techs, it didn’t works. Trade AH from Saladin, IW and Masonry later.
• 415BC-370BC: Captured Kumbi Saleh (t142). Civ destroyed.

I did make a mistake and expanding without proper techs discovered. So at 5 AD I had 13 cities and no economy.
Saladin was pleased to me (we shared Judaism), but didn’t want to trade any tech since MM dead. His cities was an easy targets but I didn’t realize that Domination possible without Astro. Too many turns was spent on researching useless techs. Eventually, I discovered Astro trough Liberalism (1190AD). Trade some minor techs with other AIs (1136AD: time to trade for Archery).

War with Saladin:

• 1136AD-1220AD: Captured 9 cities. Civ destroyed.

Thanks to jesusin for an interesting map.
I wonder what the fastest domination date will be here...

 

[jesusin]

Wars with MM:

• 2380BC-2200BC: Captured Timbuktu (t55). +1 W, -1 Q.
  MM adopts slavery already, but same time he produced settler and had to escort him. So Timbuktu left with single defender. I did wait one turn and DoW with 6Q. Next turn was still single defender in Timbuktu and I did capture it with only one Quechua lost. There is a Horse Pasture and MM was quick enough to built chariot in his 2nd city.
• 2140BC-1960BC: Captured Djenne aka GoldCity(t63). +1 W, -3 Q.
  Lost two Quechua while fighting chariot outside city. City captured and it becomes capital and SSC later. As for MM, I let him keep one last city to provide me with workers, unit’s xp and blocking Saladin. My economy was near to collapse anyway.
• 1240BC-1060BC: +1 W.
  Just keep MM in the Stone Age.
• 775BC-505BC: +1W.
  I discovered Alphabet (580BC) in case MM willing to trade some tech for peace. Although he has some good techs, it didn’t works.

• 
  
  What was your method for ending the wars?
  I guess you declared peace. When you do so, all damage inflicted in the war is forgotten. If you CeaseFire instead, then pain is not forgotten.
  When considering to pay for peace, AI takes damage suffered into account, so with CF it should have been willing to pay techs for peace.
  
  
  Or maybe I am wrong: I've heard there is a point where AI prefers to die with honour better than pay for peace when they are too small.

 

[jesusin]

Thing I learned?? counting squares for land mass is important...

Indeed. I think this is the lesson of the month for most players. Exploration is soooo important!

Is there an easy way to determine this?? I had to literally count all the land squares in the game?

IIRC, hovering your mouse over your score you see the number of land tiles you control and the total number of land tiles in the map.

Is that so much effort? Then I have good news for you: If you go to the HOF tabs in the game options there is one warning about approaching the land domination limit. Turn it on and select 50% as your limit. As soon as you get 10% of the land (in a 60% needed land game) you'll start receiving a red text every turn telling "you are close to the domination limit, you have xxx tiles out of the yyy needed for domination".

 

[Teddy KGB]

What was your method for ending the wars?
I guess you declared peace. When you do so, all damage inflicted in the war is forgotten. If you CeaseFire instead, then pain is not forgotten.
When considering to pay for peace, AI takes damage suffered into account, so with CF it should have been willing to pay techs for peace.


Or maybe I am wrong: I've heard there is a point where AI prefers to die with honour better than pay for peace when they are too small.

My method was CeaseFire, so I could DoW again anytime next worker is ready for stealing.

And yes, MM prefers to die with honour instead trade any tech for peace. He had IW, Sailing, Meditation, Masonry and Archery at the time. Maybe AI takes current power ratings into account when decided to pay or not for peace. I got enough Quechuas, but my power rating was only about twice of MM's power rating.

 

[mtt9999]

Indeed. I think this is the lesson of the month for most players. Exploration is soooo important!



IIRC, hovering your mouse over your score you see the number of land tiles you control and the total number of land tiles in the map.

Is that so much effort? Then I have good news for you: If you go to the HOF tabs in the game options there is one warning about approaching the land domination limit. Turn it on and select 50% as your limit. As soon as you get 10% of the land (in a 60% needed land game) you'll start receiving a red text every turn telling "you are close to the domination limit, you have xxx tiles out of the yyy needed for domination".

Wow. thanks. I was wondering how to get the warnings enabled That is surely helpful after this month; hopefully others read it too

 

[Conquistador 63]

Contender save - goal space race

As mentioned in my 1AD spoiler post, I had taken out Washington (2680BC) and Mansa (1390BC) and while rebuilding economy, was preparing to fight Saladin next. He fell in 815AD, the same year my first caravels set sail. The last overseas AI was met in 965AD, all very backwards, most I could get from them was feudalism.

Pause game for a week, go finish Ottoman BOTM.

Back to this game. I do have the hof mod alerts on and noticed I was getting close to land/pop limits, but thought I could manage that, even after reading the comment in 1st spoiler thread about enough land in starting landmass. In fact I could even give away poor arab cities to overseas AI. But with BOTM19 saves up, do I have motivation to finish the long space race when I have the game in the bag? No. I whip a few settlers, change civics to Caste, hire artists, learn Drama, up cultural slider and reach Domi in 1106AD. Let's go play BOTM19 now.

Fun game, but Inca is definitely not my favorite civ. Most powerful in most settings, but too cheesy.

EDIT: great write-up, kcd_swede!