GOTM 52 - first spoiler

[ainwood]

GOTM 52: End of the ancient age

.

To qualify for this spoiler, you must have reached the end of the ancient age. In addition, you must have contact with all other civilizations.

Given that this is a deity game, did you modify your starting strategy at all? When the nearby civs were met? When the resource locations were uncovered? When the lay-of-the-land was revealed? How do you feel that you are doing in this game - and who are your greatest rivals?

 

[Crakie]

As usual, I wrote down the first couple of moves, but then abandoned taking notes at all. Here's an impression though.

Expansion

By irrigating one wine and the cow and mining the rest, I was short a couple of shields for a 4 turner, so it became a 5 turner. If I had moved my settler, the 4 turner would have been possible, but since I built only a couple of settlers anyway, I do not regret not moving.

The granary was poprushed, because I feared losing out on any decent land. I managed to get all the grassland in the west, two incense resources and two cities north and northeast. The AI took care of barbarians for me, so I built little military.

Research

IW was the only 2nd tier tech, but I see the AI going for it all the time. I opted for alphabet at min, buying it along with pottery as soon as it was really cheap. Proceeded with writing, also buying it as soon as availabe. With the gpt deals in place, I hoped the Greeks and Carthage with their scary UUs would leave me alone.

Next move was literature at max and I got a monopoly on it, allowing me to trade me up to tech parity, lacking only currency, construction and polytheism. I wasted a lot of turns self-researching those because I got no help from the other AIs. Carthage was researching fast, asking monopoly prices and the rest was lagging behind. I did not build embassies, but I presume there was war going on. On the other hand, I did get the republic, monarchy and two out of three 1st tier MA techs for free or by trading, so maybe it wasn't so bad.

Production

Workers, libraries, barracks, horsemen (in that order). Guess what I'm going to do

 

[Marc Aurel]

Catastrophic start
How did I feel playing this game? Just one word : smothered!
I settled 1 tile NW of the starting position. I had awaited the AIs to be north, cause we were so close to the southern arctic region. From the start I decided to claim asap the region upstream the river (NW)(a further town that would need no aqueduct and a lot of commerce), but that was claimed by Greece faster than I could throw out my warrior for reconnaissance. For me there was no need to think about an RCP. Just claiming the few tiles left after the initial settling of AI towns. At deity they start with 3 settlers? Right? So the luck factor whether they send them away from your starting position or directly to your capital is a dominating factor in a small Pangaea deity game. I just managed to establish 10 towns at 1000BC, but not limited by the settlers I had produced but by the land left. And amongst that was a lot of tundra and hills.

Luckily survived
Begging for my pure survival I humbly did everything my AI masters were commanding me to do.
The luck that let me survive further was that my (our) two neighbours Greece and Carthage went to war in 1500BC. This war was balanced and none of them conquered a single town but the war went on for quite a couple of turns into the MA (~300BC)

Science and the ages

I started researching iron working. Initially I wanted to research pottery, but since I lost so many games by such a large amount of points I tend to take all the hints from the top players in the pregame discussion serious and even if I don’t see the point, incorporate them into my game and see what’s happening. This time researching iron working saved my neck. It was ideally tradable when I was far behind in tech since the AI’s in my game all have met very early and traded a lot (despite Greece and Babylon not knowing each other) iron working was followed by mathematics, what was also ideally tradable and so I kept up in the tech pace (as said before Greece and Carthage were wasting their resources in war). I was on even level when I had researched republic in 670 BC and immediately trading into the MA getting Feudalism and the Greeks getting Engineering what was also received in trade. I revolted to Republic and drew an anarchy of 4 turns…. But stop here I am already in the medieval.

Building….

After establishing my towns I try to squeech out every drop of my crappy situation to work every single tile I owned. I made Sogut my wonder building town .
(What shall this name say? It’s not a real town and not an easter egg. Or is there a top player whose name is Turkish translated Sogut? Well I asked a Turkish college – He had no idea, what that means. The capital before Constantinople was Bursa! In German that means So good, but that makes no sense)
The town in the west was made the worker pump to pump up the coastal tundra and hill towns. With harbors they were able to work two hills awhile getting enough commerce from the sea.
I built libraries first to get some culture pushing back the near borders of my opponents and to never fall behind in this fast tech race. After that I built barracks since I wanted to win by domination. I didn’t manage to get an AA wonder, but in the end I was building the Glib as prebuild for Leos.

Resources

As expected that was no problem – the iron next to Sogut (NE) and the horses for the next city in the west as in the east. I managed to claim both and made quite a deal selling the horses to Greece (getting Mapmaking by that, what I sold expensive to the Chinese and Spanish together with my WM)

 

[FadeAwayNot]

My first official game of the month - started GOTM 51, but after a crash I figured it wouldn't count and gave it up. Never won on Diety before, so I chose Conquest class this time.

Settled first settler one south on the tundra, plan on using wines to make a settler factory. Second settler went 2 nw to get access to the cow. Minimum run toward iron working.

A very peaceful Ancient Age, as I'm building barracks and military units, settlers and workers. In 690 I research Currency and get a monopoly. Trade it around and get into MA, as well as netting world maps, a decent chunk of gold and gold per turn. I've set my cities to building horsemen and prepping for a run on Sipahi. Before that I was building swordsmen, planning to take some land from Carthage as the MA begins to boost my land mass before taking my Sipahi on a world tour.

Made no attempt at Ancient wonders, but started a prebuild shortly before the end of the ancient age in hopes of getting Leo's.

Also, built embassies and all other civs were beating the crap out of each other --- all the better for the peaceful (and devious, but they don't know that yet) Ottomans.

End of Ancient Age I have:
11 cities
3 lux
7 warriors
1 archer
14 swordsmen
2 horsemen
3 spearmen
1st place in Historiograph (yes, Conquest class makes a BIG difference )

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Open PTW

My first official GOTM - I tried 51, but was playing it in Conquests and screwed it up, so I never finished it.

I moved the worker east to the hill and settled NW (how did people see the cow there without moving?) Was all set to spank any AI that settled in my first ring... then it turned out to be the greeks... with Carthage the other guy who might. *sigh*

My AA was a bit rocky - I made 3 mistakes, I think:

A) Research: I went pottery (not bad), writing, math - got a monopoly on pottery, which helped, but ended up having to buy everything and missed a mono on lit.
B) Settling: moved my first town south on the coastal tundra. Right place, wrong time - the greeks ended up settling on the grass coast to my SE, next to the hill, cutting me off.
C) Tribute: I was good about it, until Babylon demanded - I figured "they are on the other side of the world", so thumbed my nose. I had forgotten that they would get others involved - they quickly brought China and Carthage (or was it Greece? I don't remember) in on it. Fortunately, Greece and Carthage had had an early war, so they wasted their GA on each other.

I spend the second half of the AA at continuous war - fortunately, I built a bunch of cats which saved my butt, and no one seemed that interested in throwing swordsmen or horsemen at me...

Barbarians were another early issue - I kept trying to fight them, instead of just covering my worker and letting the AI stacks of warriors deal with them. I didn't lose a worker or get sacked, but I did have a worker idle for several turns until Carthage took care of a barb for me.

I got into the MA buy trading for techs, still at war.

Overall, not a great start, but I am still alive! and I was surprised at how small the AI stacks were - 2 or 3 units at a time. I was expecting stacks of 10 or so units.

 

[ionimplant]

open,ptw

move my settler to the east to avoid wasting the bonus land. and as a result, missed the cow
i was successful in building three cities before getting boxed in by Greece and Carthage. no turn was wasted on building a granary because i knew i wouldn't need it.
didn't complet researching a single tech myself thought i tried to get the wheel. however was able to get all the military tech via trading.

i declared on Greece after having about 8 horsemen and 3 swordmen. it's heartbeaking to see those brave horsemen dying attacking hoplites without retreating... my military soon was down to nothing after conquering two Greek cities (each defended by 3 hoplites). the reason i attacked Greece was because i found most AI capitals were defended by 2 spearmen as i established embassies with them. so i quickly sued for peace (without getting any thing from Greece since he's still much more powerful than me and was only taken by surprise by my attack. however the war slightly expanded my terriotory and i was on par with most AI in terms of area. my tech position however was so bad and i grow desperate (since originally i planned to get back by getting tech from Greece).
then a once-in-a-life time opportunity presented itself and Carthage built the great library! one of the newly-conquered Greek city was very close to Carthage and i started to set research to 0% and save up my military for the future scientific expedition

and this turns out to be very successful and i even got a great leader who created an army (would like to use him for forbidden palace but my land was just too small for it and didn't want to leave him there to prevent the appearance of a 2nd leader).

and this brings me to MA in 370BC.

by the way, Carthage also has the pyramid . to make the whole thing even sweeter, Carthage flipped back to Carthage so that i could retake it in the future before learning education.

 

[klarius]

Open PtW

Worker goes west to verify the cow lurking in the fog. Settler northwest is then the clear winner.
Settled in 3950. Build order warrior-worker-warrior-settler-granary.
Science: pottery, as this isn't around and the alternative the Wheel would tie my research to long.

Meet (all by my first warrior):
Greeks in 3600.
Carthage 3500.
Greeks and Carthage are already fighting
Chinese 2950.
Spanish 2800.
China and Spain also at war.
Babylon 2510.

Science progression (research always full throttle):
3300 pottery researched. Traded for alphabet and CB.
2230 mathematics researched.
2190 traded for TW, WC, writing, mysticism.
2070 traded for IW, MM
1830 traded for philosophy (was beaten to research by 1 turn), HBR
1475 polytheism researched. Traded for CoL and literature.
1100 traded for currency, construction - enter MA. All sci civs get mono. We are still researching republic (5 turns to finish).

For trading I used always gpt (later also horses, wines and even my only iron), never cash.
Everybody is happy with me and especially the nearest neighbors would lose quite a bit, if they would declare.
This shall stay so until I'm ready to go to war. Goal is conquest.

Empire at 1000BC:

 

[Kingsley]

Open, Vanilla.

Well my first ever game on deity level and I have to say the AA has gone a lot better than in some of my monarch and emperor level games. Civfanatics in general has improved my game a lot and playing the GOTM the last few months and reading these spoiler threads seems to have added to this exponentially.

Having only submitted domination victories in my 3 games to date (although one was accidental when I was going for a cow award ) I had been hoping to not look at going the military route this time but after reading the pre-game thread, the run for MT and domination sounded like the best plan so that is what I’ve been playing for but both diplomacy and spaceship remain open should I need a plan B.

I settled 1 tile north, figuring if tundra was visible from the starting position there was unlikely to be much fertile land between there and the coast. I sent a warrior exploring, fortified a spearman for defence and then sent a settler NW to found Iznik just passed the wheat. I was researching Alphabet at minimum.

It didn’t take too long to meet our near neighbours the Carthaginians and the Greeks (contacts made by the same warrior on adjacent turns) and discover I was slightly behind in techs. I was able to trade away some of the gap and after meeting the Chinese a few turns later close it to just one tech. The commerce rich nature of our starting position helped enormously as I quickly was able to amass enough of a war chest to switch research to maximum (minus the little bit of entertainment I needed as Inzik grew, before I was able to throw settlers out east to claim incense) and by following the path less well travelled, researching maths then currency,; polytheism letting me down by Carthage learning and trading it one turn before me I was able to buy construction for GPT the following turn and enter the MA one turn after everyone except Babylon.
I got Monotheism. I spoke to Alexander. He had Monotheism. I gifted Hammurabi. He got Monotheism

I’ve built my cities in a very tight RCP3 formation. This is unusual for me and I can’t help thinking I will pay for it after Sanitation but it seems to be paying dividends at the moment. I was about halfway through the age before I built any cultural buildings but now have a number of libraries and feel I should be able to keep up with the tech pace a while yet. It may be folly but I have decided to pursue Monarchy next. I want out of despotism quick smart, I figure there is only Spain likely to go for it as a high priority and if this game IS going to be mostly war it’ll serve me better than Republic. I’m aiming to get to Invention and build Leonardo’s en-route to MT so I hope this decision won’t leave me too far behind with nothing to trade.

The one serious mistake I made was an attempt at building the GLib in Sogut. I should have known with no pre-build that I was unlikely to get it and indeed still had nearly 30 turns left when it was completed in Madrid. With nothing big to switch too, an awful lot of shields that could have been better spent on horsemen and swords were wasted for nothing. My first task when I return and start to play the Middles Ages will be to work out the optimum time to start building a palace in Iznik so I won’t be caught out in this costly fashion when Leonardo’s does become available.

Just towards the end of the AT I had noticed that Carthage was starting to look a little vulnerable and although my military advisor told me we are weak compared to them, I knew we were close to having the infrastructure to build a military that could, if not crush them, terminally weaken them, whilst gaining valuable coastline and forcing a quick surrender. However before I could really get to the build-up phase Carthage declared on the much more powerful China. I have subsequently rejected Carthaginian calls for alliances and given in to Chinese extortion. This makes it very unlikely I will be able to take Carthage itself and claim the Colossus and Light House but by attacking unrepentantly while Hambaline is more concerned with Mao will hopefully fully open up the south east coast to the glory of the Ottomans…

 

[Nata]

PTW Open. Goal: military victory.

4000BC - Settler 1NW, to get off BG and towards Cow. And Cow it is indeed.
3950BC - Sogut. Worker moves on Cow to Irr and road it. Research: Pottery. Build: Warrior.
3700BC - Warrior explores. Start granary prebuild. Worker moves on BG.
3600BC - Warrior finds itself in the borders of newly founded Greek city, right on our doorstep! I mean, come on, it's 3 tiles from our capital! And same turn I see a Barb. Probably popped from a hut.
3250BC - Pottery learned. Sell it to Greeks for 9g to improve relations. Start Wheel.
3000BC - Granary built. Start Settler.
2630BC - contact Carthage, and we are known to China somehow. Iznik founded.
2590BC - learn Wheel but China already has it. Trade Wheel to Greece for Alphabet+10g. Trade Wheel+1gpt to Carthage for contact with Babs. Trade Pottery+Wheel to Babs for WC and CB. Start Math (thanks for advice in a Pregame thread - that was a great idea).

2150BC - Greece demands 8g and that's all we have, and we are running with -2gpt! We agree and our Granary gets disbanded! *** Greece, you'll pay me for this!
Sogut settler factory winds down building 3 more settlers, and that's all we can squeeze into our territory.
1790BC - Research Math 1st. Trade to Babs for Writing, IW, contact with Spanish and TM. Trade to Greece for Myst+TM+50g. Trade to Carthage for HBR, TM and 30g. Sell Myst to Spain for 30g and HBR to China for 13g. Start Lit.
1550BC - Furs hooked up.
1525BC - Lit researched but everybody knows it except Spain. Sell it to Spain for CoL. Then trade CoL+WM+70g to China for MM. Start Currency.
1150BC - 1 turn to Currency and 3 Civs already have it. Trade it for Philosophy and WM. Start Republic. Greece and Carthage are in MA.

1000BC - 9 cities, 27 pop. 10 workers, 10 warriors, 1 sword. All contacts, WM, missing Poly and Constr. 4 libraries, 3 barracks.
We are boxed in. 5 RCP4 cities and 3 RCP6 cities built and that's it, and the Greek Thermopilae is really hurting my RCP, it needs to go and fast. So we are building warriors for upgrade to MDIs for an early war.

775BC - learn Republic but we are late 1 turn. Still can trade it for Construction from Babs. Revolt, get 5 turns of Anarchy.
670BC - We are a Republic. Can reaserch Poly in 4 turns.
650BC - trade Poly from China for Wines, enter MA. Draw Monotheism. Greece and Carthage have Feudalism and Babs have Engineering.

Here's 1000BC snapshot:

 

[7Losses]

Well this game was a lot easier than I would have thought.

Like most others I got boxed in really early, only managing 5 or so cities.
After seeing Carthage and Greece I was almost ready to quit right then.

I decided to forge on and try to get the GL..... which I missed (Spain got it). Next was to take Carthage which had the Pyramids. This turned out to be phenomenally easy as Greece and Carthage had been at war for all the AA. It was like taking out a Regent AI's troops

All Carthage had was about 6 size 1 cities. Unfortunatly a few were destroyed. I knocked Carthage down to 1 city by the end of the AA but didn't get a leader.

I'm just glad we had iron so nearby. (Funny though, I didn't find the furs till the Industrial age. Just missing that square.)

I must say, that all up this game is easier than the last Iroquios game, granted I played the Iroquios on predator and missed the horses though.

How hard is everyone else finding it? I might just have got lucky (which doesn't happen too often.) although not as lucky as Ionimplant.

 

[Paul#42]

Ptw Predator.

I moved the settler north to get away from thundra and not between the rivers for faster AA-movement of my settlers & workers.

Sogut built warrior, warrior, granary, warrior, settler, worker, worker, settlers...

I researched Pottery, The Wheel, Literature at max and got monopolies on each
Pottery could only be traded for money and good will to far ahead Greeks and Carthaginians, but Wheel and literature gave me nearly parity.

CoL I researched half way and bought it. Republic at min was discovered by Babylon 5 turns before me (~800 BC) and not affordable to buy. But Babs did not even sell it elsewhere so I could hope to sell it later. Before getting it I traded for Poly, currency and construction for all gpt I had and reached MA.
Free tech was feudalism, two SCI civs had mono and feud already. Gifted Babs to MA, but they did not want to share their engineering . Ungrateful bastard!

I started a phony war with spain early to get some others involved but nobody wanted for lit + gpt
But Spain never came through and made peace giving me 20g without even having met

Rapid Expansion gave me incense and about 7 towns. I built barracks and libs everywhere and sold my Iron to Greek because I only wanted to build lots of horses (16 in QSC).

Catching up in tech was surprisingly easy so far, but Greek and Carthaginians did not have any fights so there are quite some units wandering through my land (with rop)

I plan to research to Chivalry, upgrade some horses and get some cities from Carthage. They gave me scary moments at the beginning when ~10 warriors chased some barbs near my capital in 3500 BC... Predator on deity rulz...

 

[tao]

Open, Vanilla

Let me echo that this was a surprisingly easy deity game. Strategic resorces nearby. No real pressure from the AIs nor from the raging barbs. But maybe I was hust luckky - at least in part.

Expansion:
The worker looked (successfully) for the suspected cow and Sogut was founded NW of the starting position. I built 2 warriors and an archer (to fight the barbs, but only 2 of them appeared), then granary and settlers.

I dedided on rcp4 and Iznik was founded in the west, Uskudar in the northwest. The settlers popping from Sogut were able to claim the tundra furs and the eastern incense. I even was able to place Istanbul on a 3 silks location in Greek country. (I did not connect the excess 2 silks to avoid extortion and luckily so, as Istanbul flipped 230bc to Greece. After the flip, I connected a silk and traded for it.)

Research:
Pottery I got for masonry from Greece. Plenty of luxuries (up to 4 local) allowed lots of science and little lux tax. I always researched as fast as possible, aiming to get monopoly techs. Iron monopoly was traded for ceremonial burial, warrior code, alphabet, and mysticism. Mathematics was learned same turn as Greece and Babylon, but still got me writing from Spain. Started construction. Map making was bought 1525bc paying about 70g and getting all maps after trading. In 1175bc Babylon learns construction and we buy it for 1gpt (we were almost done on it). Then trade construction for code of laws and horseback riding. Start researching republic.

In 650bc buy polytheism from Greece for wines, gpt, and cash. Trade it for currency. Enter Middle Ages. Get free monotheism. Trade it for literature.

Wonders:
Others reported nice nearby Wonders like Pyramids and Great Library. Not so in my game. Babylon got Colossus and Pyramids - as far away as possible from us. China built Great Lighthouse and Spain Great Library. But darn Carthage completed Great Wall, making their numidians even harder to kill.

Wars:
Greece and Carthage were already at war when we first met them. I suppose this greatly reduced their early expansion. To keep the AIs busy, I declared war on China and allied with Greece when I had a tech to spare for Alex. China allied with Spain, we signed up Babylon. Fun.

Our swords died in quantity trying to kill Carthage's numidian mercenaries in walled cities. Catapults didn't help much. Luckily Carthage always built archers for counter-attacks. Killing them produced Great Leader Orhan 410bc. I decided to save him for Sun Tzu's to greatly speed future conquests.

Plans:
Iznik has Forbidden Palace and will pre-build for Leonardo's. As Orhan is ready to hurry Sun Tzu's, IMHO I will have a very good chance to get both military Wonders. Research of course will be towards military tradition full speed. But that is to be reported in the next spoiler.

PS: Demographics shows us being first in approval, pop, gnp, mfg goods, production, income, productivity.

Ottomans at 310bc:

 

[azzaman333]

I never thought id see the day that someone would be happy about a city with the Pyramids flipping to another civ.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Never played Deity before, so I have no reference. I have to admit, seeing Carthage and Greece right next to me sucked - specially when Thermopylae went right where I wanted my 2nd city to go.

But they had early wars, so it wasn't too bad...

btw - how did people see the cow before moving the worker? Or was it just something that people figured was there, because it was cruel to not put a cow nearby?

 

[lroumen]

130AD First GotM that actually started decent, but alas a glorious defeat for me.

One town raided by about 20 barbarian horsemen/scouts. Greece flipped one of my cities which was located near the silks. Then Greece declared war on me and got help from the Carthagians which I was preparing to attack and later help from Spain.
I was keeping up with the techs by getting my hands on philosophy and trading that along, as well as writing and currency slightly before that, but sadly I was no more than a push over.


Submission didn't work, but I'll retry that later.

Reason:
Warning: ftp_login(): Authentication failed, sorry in /home/virtual/site7/fst/var/www/html/submit/gotm_submission_upload.php on line 41
Can't log in to server

 

[ionimplant]

Reason:
Warning: ftp_login(): Authentication failed, sorry in /home/virtual/site7/fst/var/www/html/submit/gotm_submission_upload.php on line 41
Can't log in to server

i got the same message one minute ago. will try another computer...

 

[Redbad]

Open, Vanilla.
...
I got Monotheism. I spoke to Alexander. He had Monotheism. I gifted Hammurabi. He got Monotheism

You shouldn't be suprised when all science civs get monotheism. That's what happens in civ3 vanilla. It happened to Klarius too, and that was more suprising as he's playing PTW.

2150BC - Greece demands 8g and that's all we have, and we are running with -2gpt! We agree and our Granary gets disbanded! *** Greece, you'll pay me for this!

It can be avoided. During the demand you can enter the big picture and trim down research.

 

[ainwood]

Yes, there is a problem with the submission process at the moment. Give it a day or so.

 

[Più Freddo]

It can be avoided. During the demand you can enter the big picture and trim down research.

How do you enter the big picture from the diplomacy screen?

 

[Redbad]

This is what klarius said in COTM13 after Twonky had a similar experience as Nata.

A small tip for future reference .
You can click on your advisor next to the demand pop-up. This lets you access your advisor screens to adjust your gpt.