GOTM 52 Final Spoiler

[magicgunnar]

This was actually my first GOTM, and while I thought Noble should be easy, I underestimated my lack of experience with diplomacy.

I usually play in my own style, and it is not always the most efficient thing to do. But this time settling the home continent went quite well, Incas got four cities I think, I tried to take over two of them by culture, but for one of them, I could not get an increase in culture around their city for mysterical reasons.

I developed Code of Laws too late, and our continent ended up without any religions. I could have developed Astronomy earlier, but having the Colossus, I didn't. That was probably a mistake.

When I met the others I didn't care about the relations, and traded with everyone. That was a mistake.

When I finally built UN, I built it in one of my core cities, I never thought about gifting it away before I read a strategyguide for diplomatic victory. I should have read that earlier.

I tried to pass resolutions in the UN to get everyone to have the same civics as me, to get a relation bonus. But that ended every civic-relation-bonus. I tried to reverse the resolutions without success. Reading this tread I see that I should have bribed them with technology to adopt my civics.

When running against Mansa Musa, nobody voted for me. Maybe I could have gifted biology to Peter, and got Mansa to vote for me, but it never occurred to me.

I could have farmed all my villages, mines and forests, but couldn't get me do it.

I did consider making nuclear winter, but didn't find the motivation

Well, I have learned alot about the diplomacy system, and that will probably come to use.

 

[neilmeister]

This was actually my first GOTM, and while I thought Noble should be easy, I underestimated my lack of experience with diplomacy.

I usually play in my own style, and it is not always the most efficient thing to do. But this time settling the home continent went quite well, Incas got four cities I think, I tried to take over two of them by culture, but for one of them, I could not get an increase in culture around their city for mysterical reasons.

I developed Code of Laws too late, and our continent ended up without any religions. I could have developed Astronomy earlier, but having the Colossus, I didn't. That was probably a mistake.

When I met the others I didn't care about the relations, and traded with everyone. That was a mistake.

When I finally built UN, I built it in one of my core cities, I never thought about gifting it away before I read a strategyguide for diplomatic victory. I should have read that earlier.

I tried to pass resolutions in the UN to get everyone to have the same civics as me, to get a relation bonus. But that ended every civic-relation-bonus. I tried to reverse the resolutions without success. Reading this tread I see that I should have bribed them with technology to adopt my civics.

When running against Mansa Musa, nobody voted for me. Maybe I could have gifted biology to Peter, and got Mansa to vote for me, but it never occurred to me.

I could have farmed all my villages, mines and forests, but couldn't get me do it.

I did consider making nuclear winter, but didn't find the motivation

Well, I have learned alot about the diplomacy system, and that will probably come to use.

Ummm, just checking that you understand that you cant just have the same civics, you must have the same civic as an AI, AND that civic must be their favourite.

You have to control your own destiny with the Civics. If your potential voting pal is in his favourite civic, then change to it.

 

[Deckhand]

I tried to pass resolutions in the UN to get everyone to have the same civics as me, to get a relation bonus. But that ended every civic-relation-bonus. I tried to reverse the resolutions without success. Reading this tread I see that I should have bribed them with technology to adopt my civics.

Ummm, just checking that you understand that you cant just have the same civics, you must have the same civic as an AI, AND that civic must be their favourite.

You have to control your own destiny with the Civics. If your potential voting pal is in his favourite civic, then change to it.

I researched Communism; gave it to Mao and adopted State Property, but he didn't like me enough (+8) to accept bribes into State Property.

Well, I have learned alot about the diplomacy system, and that will probably come to use.

There are some differences between vanilla and BtS diplomacy. e.g. I think Vanilla doesn't give you the big bonuses for gifted cities. I didn't notice any.

 

[magicgunnar]

Ummm, just checking that you understand that you cant just have the same civics, you must have the same civic as an AI, AND that civic must be their favourite.

You have to control your own destiny with the Civics. If your potential voting pal is in his favourite civic, then change to it.

Oh, I see, thanks for telling me , because I had no idea about this.

So actually it comes down to only have one civic similar to the other civ.
I should have read a lot more about diplomacy!

 

[neilmeister]

Oh, I see, thanks for telling me , because I had no idea about this.

So actually it comes down to only have one civic similar to the other civ.
I should have read a lot more about diplomacy!

Yes, exactly. I recall that I screwed my economy by changing from:
- Univeral Suffrage to Hereditary Rule for Hatty & HC
- Environmentalism to Free Markets for Mansa
...but it won me the game.

 

[Jbourne]

After reading other players games, sadly, it seem this experimental game failed. I say this because, it seems that good stratergic game play was trumped by luck of the draw more than any other xOTM's in the past.

The only real trick was to have the player start on the new world with an AI very easy to bring to Friendly status for tech trading. The old world was just two camps and if the camp you chose ended up having the third largest Civ instead of 2nd largest AI, then you got lucky. Else you are screwed.

I hope that the single VC game option be limited to the SG series, since not all players like to play for one VC. I bet many retired and did not complete the game. If the game designers' hope is to frustrate players due to failure to be lucky, then by all means full steam ahead.

Personaly, I think it would be very ORIGINAL (well almost) if the game designers offer the playes a completely un-edited first generation map and let the players duke it out the way Sid and his team originally intended. Then it will be a real Civ game.

Lastly, and sincerly, I appologize if I offend the staff and game designers. But the recent Deity game and this game has gotten under my skin. Let Deity be Deity and give a site with food and other resources to help out biginners like myself, but you do not have to make it so easy. Anyways I still do appreciate all you guys do for us. Please consider this as what it really is; my opinion.

 

[magicgunnar]

The old world was just two camps and if the camp you chose ended up having the third largest Civ instead of 2nd largest AI, then you got lucky. Else you are screwed.

There are a lot of strategies to counter an unlucky constellation of civs on the other continent. I didn't know of any of them, since I had very little experience with the diplomacy. What I would have wanted is more strategy-discussions in the first thread, so I had been able to pick up some more tactics to get the AI's to vote for me.

Since this is my first GOTM, I am probably not speaking for anyone else than myself, but I found the game quite entertaining to the point were I built the UN. It was fun to play a completely different game than anything else I have played. And I learned a lot about the diplomacy in civ IV.

 

[Erkon]

...Personaly, I think it would be very ORIGINAL (well almost) if the game designers offer the playes a completely un-edited first generation map and let the players duke it out the way Sid and his team originally intended. Then it will be a real Civ game.

Lastly, and sincerly, I appologize if I offend the staff and game designers. But the recent Deity game and this game has gotten under my skin. Let Deity be Deity and give a site with food and other resources to help out biginners like myself, but you do not have to make it so easy. Anyways I still do appreciate all you guys do for us. Please consider this as what it really is; my opinion.

Don't worry. We're not easily offended. I appreciate all feedback. It's needed in order for us to improve the games. Unedited first generation maps don't necessarily reduce the luck factor, and are not always suitable for competition. Some maps are unaltered, some are heavily modified, sometimes we add conditions and sometimes not. Keep telling us what you think work, and what you don't think work.

 

[damnrunner]

Ugly game. My PC was down so I rushed through and think I got it submitted in time.

I tried to settle the gems to lock the Inca's in the south. My plan was a culture bomb this city to flip an Inca city a bit furerth south. This did not happen as the further rsouth city built SH a few turns latter and my gems city got flipped before I could tech Music for the GA. I did use the GA for a city a founded on the peninsula to the East.

I had a huge tech lead the whole game and played the liberalism race pretty well. I ended up using Lib for Radio which I believe the most expensive tech on the way to MM. I easily got the vote to control the UN with Egypt, Inca, France being supportive. My opponent was Russia.

But on the Win vote only Inca gave me votes. I was able to switch around some civics and get some teams to convert religion and eventually was able to get everyone except for China supporting me in the UN control elections. But I was never able to pick up enough votes to win. Teams would just switch from Peter to abstain. Later on teams started switching to Free Rel and at that point it was hopeless.

I retired in the 1700s.

 

[Htadus]

Once again I ran out of time. This was a very calculated game and stratergically well played except for one mistake.

Once I realized that we were in new world, the plan was to speed up to get Astro and grab land in the old world. Got astro in 780AD and sent two settlers and mace each to old world. Did not open borders with Any AI or trade with any AI other than HC for a long time, but kept him backwards also. The problem was by the time my settlers got there, there were no room to build a city except in the korean/chinese peninsula. French must have just captured a barb city there and we built a city between that and a Chinese city. This was acceptable to both chinese and russian for future gifting of UN city.

For this purpose, I had dedicated a city to run just a Engineer and had built HG to get a GE. Learned Mass Media in 1400 AD and but by this time I had chosen to not do a UN gift so started building a new palace in my high food and hammer city with 4 flood plains, hills, copper, and cows. The GE has not arrived yet since others were born in my other wonder city next to HC. So I sped the GE with the help of other specialist. Completed the UN in 1510 AD.

During the interim I chose Mansa (4th place), Hatty(5th) and HC (6th) to be in my team. But that was a mistake since Mansa had better land he ended up being #2 by population. We won the UN head seat but was only getting HC's vote while Hatty voted for Mansa and all others obstained. That was 1540AD I think and I was a few turns from getting Biology. That was as far as I got.

I do not think I read the population situation correctly and that was a shame. I was also in the process of building settlers and switching to farms. I hope to hear from the winner of the game about his/her strategy.

 

[Conquistador 63]

Personaly, I think it would be very ORIGINAL (well almost) if the game designers offer the playes a completely un-edited first generation map and let the players duke it out the way Sid and his team originally intended. Then it will be a real Civ game.

Valid point and opinion. However, I believe the XOTM staff is doing a good job providing enough variety with a nice balance of unique scenarios and ordinary random-generated maps. For those who are around for a while (maybe should be retired by now ) like myself, the weird scenarios are much more interesting than the run-of-the-mill "Sid" games. Maybe a good topic for a poll?

 

[neilmeister]

I hope that the single VC game option be limited to the SG series, since not all players like to play for one VC.

I have to disagree.

If you want to win a top medal, then a normal GOTM only has 1 real VC. Conquest/Domination are only minor variations of each other.

It frustrates me a little as I am a builder. The fastest victory awards are good, but in reality, the only way to get the fastest spaceship/diplomatic victory is also through conquest. I am not complaining, this is just a fact of Civ4.

The only VC that can be achieved the fastest without conquest, is cultural. When was the last time a cultural victory got a medal, let alone a gold medal?

So, please, have the occasional GOTM that makes the conquest warmongers stop and think for a few minutes about how they might win. The fact that even Cactus_Pete was asking for advice on diplomatic victories illustrates this.

 

[kcd_swede]

Ugly game. My PC was down so I rushed through and think I got it submitted in time. ....

Later on teams started switching to Free Rel and at that point it was hopeless.

I retired in the 1700s.

Free Religion should not be a problem unless your main source of +diplo comes from shared religion. In my game, I needed to switch out of religion in order to eliminate the -diplo for wrong religion, and won the game in Free Religion civic.

The +diplo for shared religion should always be looked at as an unreliable bonus. The AI can convert faith or go to free religion at any time -- beyond your control. What you should do is use the early common religion to get Friendly relations, which enables tech trading, defense pacts, war bribes, etc. It is these other modifiers that are dependable, durable, and under your full control. With religion you should get to about +15 diplo easily, and when you or your AI friend lose the faith, the friendship should endure above +8.

So Free Religion did not need to make your game hopeless, and it probably wasn't hopeless, except having your back against the submission deadline might have been the real problem.

Maybe I'm misinterpretting your description of the game, but it sounds as if you were trying to get everybody happy with you. (All voted for you as UN president except Mao???). It is much better to pick just one or two (or rather the FEWEST number that gets you 66% of pop vote) and cultivate HATRED between them and everyone else. Shared hatred is a much better modifer than shared religion. They will vote for you at +8, generally speaking, (unless they have +9 with your opponent) and that you can do without shared religion.

It requires foresight, planning and good diplomatic skills to manipulate a post-religion diplo situation. Some peoples games surely fell out in a way that required far less skill to take advantage of the situation. That's the breaks -- yet the same names seem to show at the medal podium again and again, indicating that luck is not that big of a deciding factor here. Skill is better. (But best of all is luck + skill, I'd imagine.)

 

[Jbourne]

Valid point and opinion. However, I believe the XOTM staff is doing a good job providing enough variety with a nice balance of unique scenarios and ordinary random-generated maps. For those who are around for a while (maybe should be retired by now ) like myself, the weird scenarios are much more interesting than the run-of-the-mill "Sid" games. Maybe a good topic for a poll?

I was not clear in my argument. I have no problem with occational twist, in this particular game, I have no problem with the twist, it was lack of other VC, that bugs me. By all means please set up the medals to be based on a particular VC, but let the other VC's available for people who are not as good as elite players who are looking for that extra excitement or does not have alot of time/or computer power to play 3010 turns. What is wrong with Giving medals to Diplo game with always peace turned on? Just let the wimps among us win space or culture to finish the bloody game.

I have to disagree.

If you want to win a top medal, then a normal GOTM only has 1 real VC. Conquest/Domination are only minor variations of each other.

It frustrates me a little as I am a builder. The fastest victory awards are good, but in reality, the only way to get the fastest spaceship/diplomatic victory is also through conquest. I am not complaining, this is just a fact of Civ4.

The only VC that can be achieved the fastest without conquest, is cultural. When was the last time a cultural victory got a medal, let alone a gold medal?

So, please, have the occasional GOTM that makes the conquest warmongers stop and think for a few minutes about how they might win. The fact that even Cactus_Pete was asking for advice on diplomatic victories illustrates this.

You may agree if I stated my thoughts clearly. What you said was my point also but I would ALSO like the other VC's turned on.

-- yet the same names seem to show at the medal podium again and again, indicating that luck is not that big of a deciding factor here. Skill is better. (But best of all is luck + skill, I'd imagine.)

Actually I see this as a situation where a good SOD's beating the crap out of Luck.

So lets rotate the medals for different VC's. Highest SCOREs in the selected VC gets the gold, silver and bronze. Give peace a chance man. Oh yeah...I am not saying to mess with the player standing at all. That should stay as it is right now. Medals and standing based on score or speed should not be connected in my opinion.