GOTM 52 Final Spoiler

[Erkon]

GOTM 52 Final Spoiler

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Who was you UN opponent? How did you handle the two factions in the old world? Did you trade with everyone?

 

[kcd_swede]

Not bad for having lost ny first settler to barbs...

Writing from memory with two other games played since then, so may have some innaccuracies here...

I used Liberalism to take Astro, enabling trade with the Old World. Pretty clear diplo situation there... Mansa and (?) Hatty I could get pleased by trading and judicious use of civic, so would be my Friendly targets for the diplo vote (plus HC who was already at Friendly +18, and I could thus keep HC friendly even when switching to Free Religion and losing the +7 shared confu bonus).

Peter was the largest civ on the new world, but only slightly larger than Mansa. He was also conveniently everyones worst enemy. And of course he was building useless military units like crazy.

I beelined Biology to up my vote total (which ended up being about twice the votes of any other civ). After Bio its simply to beeline Mass Media while stupid AI are chasing military techs. Win game on first vote. It was kind of close that Mansa was only 1 vote lower than Peter... if Mansa got bigger he would be my opponent and ruin my first vote victory... it would have taken about 8 turns to gift Bio to any AI to improve their population since they were so backwards and lacked many precursors. So a bit of luck at the end, but nothing unmanageable. I should also mention that I lucked out and got a GE at low odds (about 30%) as my last great person. Not entirely luck since I was actively trying for one, but still beat the odds this time, which shaved about 20 turns from the UN build time (built in 7 turns instead of 29).

Interesting game set-up, nice to try once, but I don't think I'd like to see too many games like this with several VC's turned off, because the AI can't handle it.

Now it will be interesting to see how the really good players managed to beat my finish date by 3 or more centuries. My score wasn't great either, 40k or so... but I hadn't really prioritized that so that the mediocrity is expected.

 

[JoyBunny]

I had been waiting for the new gotm to begin so as soon as it was up I started playing and in one sitting got mass media and built the UN with two GE's. That was in the late 1700's, unfortunatley my7 diplo game was a bit off and although I had hatty and mansa in my corner no one else liked me
Peter ended up winning the first vote and promptly began screwing up all my civic options so I settled in for the long haul. By 3800 I had managed to severly reduce the population of the world by using my spies to bomb any improvement that netted extra food and building nuclear reactors in my smaller cities and waiting for them to blow up to help with climate change (climate change does not seem to affect coastal food production). combined with 100% culture to flip rival cities got me within 12 votes of victory when a saw the message that the game would be stopped at 2050.
Oh well, I least I learned that I aint much good at diplomacy. Let us hope for all out war in the next GOTM

 

[PutCashIn]

3800!

 

[neilmeister]

3800!

Holy crap!

I researched MM around 1500, but unfortunately had to slow build the UN due to no GE's, despite reasonable percentages.

Peter was easily the biggest, and definitely going to be the opposition.

Just before UN was finished, the Inca's decided to make Mansa their worst enemy, screwing the vote completely. I should have changed civics to get the civic bonus earlier, but it just didn't seem necessary, as I had every other bonus possible (except for religion), all of my allies had asked for tech help at some stage.

So, 9 votes of the UN, and seemingly millenia, I finally won, 1800...ish

 

[Thorrez]

Retired

Not any luck in the old world as Hatty was the largest and och course Mansa loved her. So my only way to win was to try to gift Peter up to Biology (suffering -4 with most other AI, but Mansa and Hatty stayed at pleased), but even with the he never became my rival (lacked 6 pops at one point). And he would not accept my colonies SE of thier continent, that would have made the trick...

Made a desperate attempt to gift HC 2 of my cities but only Hatty and Mansa would vote for me so i did not help.

Not sure if my game (Hatty largest even with Peters biology) was winnable.

 

[Aldor]

I succeeded in taking all of the northern continent for myself, then I went teching for biology and techs leading to the UN. While sailing around the world, I found the other civs and opened borders with them. By this time, Peter was the second largest so I set my goal around befriending enough of the others. When I got Astro I made the first mistake of immediately starting to trade with the civs on the other continent. Should've waited for a bit longer to evaluate the situation.

Because a while later, it turned out that HC became the second largest...and so my best friend in the world was out of voting for me He had the complete south continent of the new world, and apparently that was enough to be second in size (he never founded any colonies either). Thats also why in wrote a spoiler in my first post in this thread that it would've been a good idea to secure some of the space in the south.

So now I needed three of the other civs in the old world to vote for me. Unfortunately, it turned out that Mansa and Hatty were the hated ones...so while easy to befriend, their votes wouldn't be enough. I switched around and tried to get Peter, Mao and Napoleon on my side, as they were all good friends with each other.

Unfortunately, by now I had "You have traded with our worst enemy" with all of them (from trading with Mansa/Hatty). Then I had a moment of carelessness and canceled all my trades with Mao on the request of Mansa (argh)...more diplo bad juice

Eventually, I still got all of them to high pleased (generous tributes of resources & gold). But at this point, I discovered the unfairness of CiV4's diplo system (honestly, I had never really looked so closely at it): all of them liked HC, and FOR WHATEVER REASON, AIs do NOT need 10+ to be friendly! Peter had +6 modifiers to HC and was friendly. Similar with Mao. Nappy only had +5 but was still pleased with HC and voting for him (although I had +10 pleased, although also -2 from worst enemy trading, so in effect something like +8).

So...I had higher modifiers to them than HC had. Still they voted for him and not for me (I know they will only vote at friendly, or perhaps pleased with no negative modifiers?). The situation was a complete stalemate. Even when I finally managed to get Peter to friendly (gave him help...a tech), and he voted for me, it was foreseeable that the situation wouldn't change until 2050, so I retired sometime in the late 1970's or so.

Looking back...what could I have done differently?
- watch more carefully to avoid negative modifiers.
- aggressively settly HCs southern continent to prevent him from becoming second in size
- perhaps gift some of my colonies to another AI (Peter) to make him the second...don't know if he would've taken the cities, but might've been worth trying.

In the end...it was a nice game that ended unsatisfying for me. Meh. Perhaps next time it'll be better.

 

[kcd_swede]

Looking back...what could I have done differently?
- watch more carefully to avoid negative modifiers.
- aggressively settly HCs southern continent to prevent him from becoming second in size
- perhaps gift some of my colonies to another AI (Peter) to make him the second...don't know if he would've taken the cities, but might've been worth trying.

In the end...it was a nice game that ended unsatisfying for me. Meh. Perhaps next time it'll be better.

Well, lets assume that HC blocked you from taking his land and that wasn't even an option. Lets assume that none of the AI on the far away continent have acheived dominence and therefore HC is #2 in pop. What are your options?

Basically, you have to get enough of the worlds population to love you more than they love HC, and there are several strategies (not mutually exclusive) you could try. The basic goal though is to max the friendly pop and minimize the unfreindly. As in:
1) Increase domestic population
-- this means farm over cottages, priority graneries and Lighthouses and high health/happy caps.
-- it also means Biology tech
-- it also means found more cities (hopefully possible since you got to astronomy first, right?) The EL islands were a real prize.

2) Increase pop of friendly civs
-- basically as above, with the option of gifting cities, gifting biology, gifting resources to raise their caps, all of which should keep them friendly.

3) Reduce the pop of your rivals
-- kind of tough in the always pizza settings, culture crush HC is possible though

Now the question is of course how to get enough civs more friendly with you than with HC. This is a different part of the game, really. The MOST important aspect here is knowing from the start that it is very rare that you can get everyone friendly, and you need to select the civs you want to be friendly and the ones you can safely piss off. Hint: bigger friends is better.

And since you KNOW you are going diplo in this game, every trade of anything needs to be carefully evaluated for diplo implications (Never trade with the worst enemy of your target civ). Check the diplo screen often so you know which demands/request you can ignore and which demands you cannot. Religion is critical - it will create both rivalries (negative diplo) and love (positive diplo) between various partners. Also note that the #2 civ (HC in your case) will NEVER vote for you, so pissing the Inca's off isn't only an option, its a good idea (in any election it is good to differentiate yourself from your opponent so the voters have a clear choice --rather than trying to make them choose between two brands of vanilla, make them choose choclate versus vanilla). Adopt a different religion than HC is a good idea, or at least free religion. Also, try to make other AI adopt different religion than HC (tech lead for bribing them thus is very useful). Don't hog religions or the religion could be locked to your detriment (but you can try to spread and convert them if necessary -- note the civ with the holy city will probably never leave that religion, but the other will be glad too for a price). Try to bribe them to war (err... rather, in this game try to bribe them to stop trading). Gift them health and happy resources so their pop can grow beyond present happy/health caps, and accrue +diplo. Gift them cash per turn if that's all you have left (reduce slider if needed). Agitate HC as much as possible so maybe he starts building units instead of things that grow pop. Your target civs should optimally have favorite civics that complement rather than exclude each other, and you need this bonus (and it takes time to accrue, as with gifted resources modifier). And when your tech/trading modifiers are maxed look for other modifiers to improve (these max limits are fixed and constant for each leader and you can look them up in the forum or I can link you to the leaderheads if you need). Agree to EVERY demand/request your targets make (use common sense, you can say no to someone who is +18 if he wants you to stop trading with someone who is only at +7 -- but hopfully you've chosen civs that won't hate each other that much), and be HAPPY any time they make them as it is very cheap and fast +diplo. Bribe your targets into civs that will make them like each other if you have to. Gifting cities is really sweet, but in this type of game it might be hard to find settle sites that they would accept as gifts... but not impossible, note the really crappy 1-tile islands and such.

Muck with HC's diplo as well. Try to get him to stop trading with civs. Try to get him out of popular civics. Try to get him into an unpopular religion. Buy up all his excess resources as soon as he puts them on the market, so he cannot get +diplo for fair trade. If you have spies late game, you can pillage his resources that he is trading to break up those trades. You can pillage his food to inhibit his pop. Better yet if you can win before HC even contacts the other civs.

There is probably a lot of other stuff you can do if you really set your mind to it. Not having to worry about war means you can focus 100% on these things. The main thing to managing diplo is knowing all the things that will improve/hurt diplo relations, knowing the max/min limits for each category of diplo modifier, and useing them for your benefit and your opponents detriment. Those players who always rely on common war diplo modifiers (which are among the fastest and biggest) probably found this diplo situation to be tough. But it wasn't a tough diplo situation really, as long as you focus on the diplo victory from turn 1. Early contact with the other civs was paramount in order to assess the diplo situation and start manipulating it as early as possible. Bsically: Don't be passive.

 

[kcd_swede]

GOTM 52 Final Spoiler

Reading Requirements

Stop! If you are participating in GOTM 52, then you MUST NOT read this thread unless

• You have submitted your entry
• You have abandoned your game and will not submit your entry

Who was you UN opponent? How did you handle the two factions in the old world? Did you trade with everyone?

I'm curious... there were two islands obviously worldbuilded into the game, shaped as E and L. These were really the only good city sites available after astronomy, and I'm wondering what the EL stands for? Erkon Lives?

 

[Fluroscent]

I didnt want to risk the diplo situation mucking up my chances of victory, so my #1 goal was to grow large enough to only need a few to vote for me. Turned out to be overkill, since I had the similar diplo picture as kcd swede. Mansa, Hatty and HC voting for me vs Peter. But still, I could probably have grown large enough to only need one of them to vote if needed.

Ended up with 32 cities all over the world, even captured a barb city in the old world and settled the southern wheat in South America. Several 1 tile islands with seafood too, and of course the EL(??) islands.
No luck with a GE so no chance of fastest victory, but did win the first vote in 1600AD. Was pretty bored by then, but should probably have waited a round or two to score better.
Bit complicated when HC met the old world, since Mansa+Hatty hated him, so I had to stop trading with them more than the minimum needed to get the fair trade +4 in the end.

Funny game setting, but I can see how it can turn out frustrating for some .
The most important things to do in order to avoid ending up in an unwinnable situation: 1. Settle to block HC, to make sure he didnt become the opponent. 2. Dont trade with the old world until absolutely sure who to butter up, and then making SURE to not trade with anyone they dont like.

 

[Aldor]

Basically, you have to get enough of the worlds population to love you more than they love HC, ...

Thats exactly what the situation was...they DID love me more My overall diplo modifiers WERE greater than the AIs. I had 10+ positive modifiers with all (although the negative modifiers got that down to 8 and 9 for Mao and Napoleon). However, Peter for example had only +6 towards HC, but that number was enough to get him to be friendly towards HC AI, while I need 11+ (?) to be friendly. Bit unfair really.

Funny game setting, but I can see how it can turn out frustrating for some .
The most important things to do in order to avoid ending up in an unwinnable situation: 1. Settle to block HC, to make sure he didnt become the opponent. 2. Dont trade with the old world until absolutely sure who to butter up, and then making SURE to not trade with anyone they dont like.

As I posted, at first I thought it was Peter who I was going against. HC became #2 only a while after I met the others. And I really messed up on the second point, should have avoided all trade until I was sure it wouldn't have hurt me. Religion was much less of a problem, especially after going to Free Religion.

 

[Mitchum]

-- note the civ with the holy city will probably never leave that religion, but the other will be glad too for a price.

I will post my spoiler when I have access to my notes, but I was able to get Hatty to switch away from her holy city religion... twice...

 

[jeffr23]

Well, that was...interesting. My first even attempt at Diplomatic victory in IV, as it happens.

I managed to grab all of North America, but was a bit too ambitious in Central, trying for the Marble as well as the Gems and wound up getting Philidelphia culture-flipped. Boston up to the north, though, was a cultural powerhouse and held the gems (just outside of it's BFC) most of the game, but never flipped Philly back. I founded Confuscianism, but spent most of the game with Buddism from the Incas. Popped the huts on the Caribbean/Falkland islands, but didn't get any techs from it.

When I got Caravels, I loaded some Buddhist missionaires onto them and set sail for the old world, making contact with everyone and discovering Initalstrailia. Popped the hut with a missionary and got Astronomy, so I sent colonies over there. Built three faithcatcher cities, but only wound up with the minority religions, no Hinduism. Peter put a city on the fourth corner, but it got squeezed and eventually flipped over to me.

Tech-wise, drove to Biology first and then Mass Media, then built the UN in the early 1900s and then...floundered. I won the first sec gen vote overwhelmingly, against Egypt. Couldn't get victory, though. So I went free religion, which got me better relations with most people, but Huyana dropped to Pleased and never went Friendly again. So the next few score turns were me, thrashing about, giving away the store, and trying to assemble a coalition. Part of the problem was that the AIs were closely balanced, and any given election could have a different opponent (Russia, Egypt, Mali, and the Inca all showed up.) The second problem was that it wasn't until late that I realized that I should be running a really stupid civic like HR to be popular. Finally, a perfect storm arrived in 2040, with the election against Huyana, allowing the other big contenders to all vote for me, just before the designated end of the game, with future tech 6 or 7 going on...

 

[Mitchum]

At 500 AD, I was 1 turn away from meeting the Old World. As I met the AI on the continent, I didn't make any trades other than trading maps with the first AI I met (couldn't get negative diplo points if I didn't know the other AI yet).

As in most of the games mentioned here, there were two major camps: the Buddhist camp made up of Peter and Mao and the Jewish camp made up of Hatty, Napoleon and Mansa. I hate to depend on Peter or Mao for anything, so I decided very early to put my hat in the Jewish ring (soon to be Confucian ring... ).

Before I continue, I have to admit that I am one of those players who never really pays attention to the diplomatic situation during a game. I typically accept and refuse trades and demands based on how I'm feeling at the time, not based on the relationships of the other civs. With that said, this was new territory for me... let's call it "on-the-job training" or "trial by fire."

I had loaded a Confucian missionary on each of my caravels. I sent them both to a city of Mansa's and spread the good message of Mr. Confucius. Having never done this before, I saw that Mansa was now willing to switch to Confucianism for a cheap tech. Wow, this is going to be easier than I thought. What could possibly go wrong? I know, famous last words, right? Well, my big happy family wasn’t so happy any more. I was getting “You’ve traded with our worst enemy” modifiers from both Nappy and Hatty now.

After learning Astronomy, I did something that I would have never dreamed about a week ago; I set up a galley chain and began sending missionaries to the Old World. As quickly as I could, I converted Nappy and Hatty to Confucianism as well. We were all a big, happy family again!

About this time, I saw a great barb city on the eastern coast of the Old World that would make an excellent UN city, which could be gifted to either Mao or Peter to ensure that I wasn’t up against one of my allies in the upcoming election. Just as I was about to load a few maces onto one of my galleys, Peter took the city.

Time for plan B. I unloaded my now useless maces and put a settler and worker in their place and set sail for the EL Islands. I plopped my settler down on L Island, founding Seattle. I then checked my trading options. Neither Mao nor Peter were willing to accept the city in trade I planned once the UN was built. I should have known that they wouldn’t want a city as rainy as Seattle. I should have changed the name before settling it. Well, maybe they’ll like the city better once it has the UN in it…

I started teching on the Mass Media beeline. I used Great Scientists to bulb Education, Printing Press, Physics and Electricity. I used Liberalism on Radio and the Great Artist from Music to bulb Mass Media, which I learned on T188 (1280 AD). I started building the United Nations in Seattle on T194 as soon as it had finished its forge first. I didn’t finish the UN until T216 (1530 AD), almost 30 turns after finishing Mass Media. And this was with the help of a Great Engineer too! Boy, beelining Mass Media sure didn’t do anything to speed up my finish date. It didn’t help that I was building the UN in a new city with poor production, low population and very few forests.

I checked the trading screen again and Seattle was still not wanted by Peter or Mao. I could have built the UN in 5 or 6 turns in one of my main cities. Why did I go to all of the trouble of building the UN in a city that no one wanted? Thinking back, neither Peter nor Mao had learned Astronomy, so this city wouldn’t have been connected to their empire. I wonder if they would have taken it had they known this tech…

Three turns before completing the UN, Hatty had switched back to Judaism and I started getting negative diplo points within my circle of friends. I started missionary spamming again in earnest (I had never stopped, but I now began focusing on Hatty only), spreading Confucianism to every one of her cities.

In any event, Peter was the largest civ, but not by much (Peter @ 77 vs. Mansa at 74). I won the Secretary General vote by a large margin even with Hatty not sharing my religion. I prayed that Mansa wouldn’t outgrow Peter in the next several turns. I was finally able to get Hatty to switch back to Confucianism, three turns before winning the game in 1560 AD in another landslide vote.

I think I could have shaved quite a few turns off my finish date had I built the UN in one of my more mature cities. I also finished Oxford rather late (1210 AD), even though I prioritized Education (520 AD) over Astronomy. Finally, trying to spawn a Great Engineer at 100% odds meant that I never was able to crank up my GP Farm to generate all the Great Scientists I could have used to bulb more techs.

All in all, this was an interesting game and I'm happy to have won my first sloppy attempt at a diplo victory.

 

[Erkon]

...Eventually, I still got all of them to high pleased (generous tributes of resources & gold). But at this point, I discovered the unfairness of CiV4's diplo system (honestly, I had never really looked so closely at it): all of them liked HC, and FOR WHATEVER REASON, AIs do NOT need 10+ to be friendly! Peter had +6 modifiers to HC and was friendly. Similar with Mao. Nappy only had +5 but was still pleased with HC and voting for him (although I had +10 pleased, although also -2 from worst enemy trading, so in effect something like +8)...

There are two modifiers that are added to the visible relation points between two AIs before the friendly/pleased/etc tag is decided. First, there is a random value decided when the game is started. I've heard that this modifier can change during the game, but I can't find any post confirming this rumor. Second, there is a modifier based on the BasePeaceWeightRand value in the LeaderHeadInfos.xml file. The eager student can find that AIs that have friendly relations have a similar value, while non-friendly AIs have very different value. These modifiers are only used between AIs, not towards the player. The very eager student can calculate the hidden modifier by tracking the inter-AI relation over time.

...Try to get him to stop trading with civs...

Lots of good advice

Keep in mind though that bribing an AI to stop trading will result in a negative modifier from "you have negotiated a trade embargo against us".

I'm curious... there were two islands obviously worldbuilded into the game, shaped as E and L. These were really the only good city sites available after astronomy, and I'm wondering what the EL stands for? Erkon Lives?

Sorry, this is a result of my vanity and obvious abuse of my position. EL is stands for my RL first name and surname. Please forgive me. The intention was to help the player getting some extra pop for the vote, so I'm not pure evil, right? People normally don't notice the easter eggs I add. This time I may have been to obvious

Did players find this game easier or harder than a typical Noble game, or just different?

 

[Mitchum]

Did players find this game easier or harder than a typical Noble game, or just different?

Since I've never tried for a diplo victory, I'd have to say that it was different. Although, as a war monger, not being able to use pointy-stick diplomacy severely limited my normal go-to options...

 

[JoyBunny]

I am fighter, not a lover so this was a challenge for me.
I was frustrated when I read that games would be capped at 2050 though. I was all set on winning that election even if it took me 6000 years

 

[kcd_swede]

Did players find this game easier or harder than a typical Noble game, or just different?

I'm sure that the randomized hidden modifiers as well as the Old World diplomacy situation being somewhat outside player control will lead to very different answers to this question. My own game was definitely easier than a normal noble level game.

When a chess player is up against a superior opponent, a wise strategy is to trade trade trade powerful pieces... and turn it into a game of checkers. By turning off the vc's, you make this a game of checkers (albeit one which may or may not be winnable).

That's my 50 öre. (2 cents).

 

[Aldor]

Did players find this game easier or harder than a typical Noble game, or just different?

I found it a lot easier than a regular game. No war, so no need to worry about military at all, or sudden backstabs. The real challenge was to adapt to only one victory condition. I haven't got a lot of diplo victories, so this one was really a nice learning game to see the finer points and strategies (and learn what to avoid

 

[da_Vinci]

I'm curious... there were two islands obviously worldbuilded into the game, shaped as E and L. These were really the only good city sites available after astronomy, and I'm wondering what the EL stands for? Erkon Lives?

I believe it is for "Erkon Laughing"

dV