GOTM 52 Second Spoiler

[ainwood]

GOTM 52 Spoiler 2

To qualify for this spoiler, you must have either reached the start of the industrial age, or completed (and submitted) your game.

To avoid spoiling it for players who are playing through the industrial and modern ages, please don't post anything showing industrial (or later) age resources.

In this game - when did you feel that you were comfortably on-top? Or were you beaten? Did you make best-use of your unique unit, and when did you time your golden age?

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I spent most of the last half of the ancient age at war with Babylon and those they drew in against me, after I flipped them the bird when they demanded 21 g. This was a bad idea, of course... (conquistadors really suck when you are leaving cities empty - I lost a couple to long-range spanish attacks)

Then, after I got into the middle ages and got some medieval infantry, I attacked carthage to gain some territory and some techs - I just got the territory - the great wall kicked my ass (and the game, too - kept crashing)

the drive to the sipahi was uneventful, but when I got them, I had some problems - not enough money to upgrade my horsemen en masse, and they are expensive to build.

So I ended up selling off all my libraries and temples (which causes problems later), to get cash.

The sipahi are much fun, btw. They are pretty much an unfair advantage

I attacked carthage to extort techs - unfortunately, after I took out their 3 cities near me, they wouldn't talk, so I had to build a caravel to go "invade" their territory and shut them up. That got me to, I think, Astronomy - but Greece was in the IA, so signed a MPP with china.

I thought - ah, heck. how bad could that be? so prepared to attack Greece (my golden age went to making sipahi and building up a fair cash reserve)

Then Spain attacked for no reason, and I brought Babylon in to deal with that.

Unfortunately, all that pulled some of my sipahi away, so my initial attack on Greece wasn't as concentrated as I would have liked.

But with some back and forth (I lost one of my towns 3 times because I couldn't get rid of athens fast enough and he would always send his new cavalry to take it...)

I got rid of Greece, and extorted some techs.

Unfortunately, the game looks pretty hopeless right now - Babylon is a monster who is close to domination, and must be 8 techs ahead by now in the IA - I'm just now getting electricity, and they completed Theory of Evolution.

I may play it out - Babylon demanded tribute and I flipped him off and dragged spain and china in - and I'm holding him off, but it's only a matter of time before he shows up with forces I *can't* handle, and I've been unable to go on the advance to mess him up.

Lack of leaders has been a huge problem - I spent probably 2/3 of this game at war and got my first leader in 1580 AD!!

But it's been fun - and, frankly, I'm surprised I made it this far, especially with my early mistakes. I have to admit, I used to worry about deity level war, and the big problems I run into is when I act like the AI, and break up my attackers, instead of concentrating them...

 

[Crakie]

Whaddaya know, I spent the MA building horsies and knights while beelining to MT! I did not opt for early wars, focussing all my infrastructure on mounted units because my tight city spacing would not produce the Saphahi in decent numbers, so I depended on the mass upgrades to take the whole continent basically.

Researching along the lower tech tree allowed me to keep up in tech with the rest of the world, except for Carthage who reached the IA first with a 2 tech lead to the rest of us. Surprising, because it was the smallest AI around and at war with Greece. Still, this made them my natural first target and they did not put up much of a fight. I proceeded to RoP rape Greece, China, Spain and stopped at Babylon... not necessarily a mistake, but I did not realize how powerful the Saphahi are even against riflemen (Babylon was the first AI who actually managed to get them).

I did not get a leader to set up my second core so I built the FP next to the capital, then palace jumped to Athens.

 

[tao]

I felt "good" at the very beginning of the Middle Ages.

In 130BC I could trade engineering for monarchy and feudalism, my saved Great Leader built Sun Tzu's, my pre-build was switched to Hanging Gardens (undisputed). The Leonardo pre-build was also a sure bet. I felt in control.

10AD Greece - having not yet connected either of their 2 irons - demanded our only resource. Denial. War.
Having captured Carthage and Great Wall, we made peace with Hanni getting his spices city Leptis Minor on the other continent.
The Greek war was slow against hoplites, but main emphasis was on research towards MilTrad. Being undisputed tech leader, I bought alliances against Greece keeping the AIs busy. My conquest was along the southern coast, getting the iron and reclaiming the flipped silk cilty of Istanbul.

In 490AB we learned MilTrad, upgraded 7 knights to Dragoons (Sipahi) and 500AD the Golden Age started.

Mistakenly I declared on China 660AD (I wanted to declare on Spain). Thus I declared on Spain also. And then 7 dragoons died attacking Seville!

In 680AD Ottomans enter Industrial Ages with 2 turns of Golden Age left. The Babylonians are 2 techs behind, but have twice our culture. All others will soon fall to our dragoons.

 

[Marc Aurel]

The MA was great fun and finally I managed to reach the domination limit before 1000 AD. No wonder - this was a small pangaea map. But it was also my first win on Deity.
Everything went as planned this time in my game. I was tech leader all the time during MA until I got to Mil Trad in 480 AD. In that time I sold my monopoly techs (all MA lower branch techs despite Mil Trad itself). Thus making much money in gpt deals. At maximum that was more than 130 gpt. So I had a lot of money in 490 AD, upgrading 38 horsemen to Sipahi and then taking the Ais out :

500 – 530 Carthage
530 – 590 Greece
600 – 690 China by RoP rape
700 – 730 Spain

Then I paused to invade the island first with my armies by RoP. After installing 15 units on the big island, I ran over Babylon from 810 onward reaching the domination limit in 880 AD. This game saw not a single rifleman unit. And the Sipahi are damned effective.

 

[Crakie]

Nicely done, Marc, sure does feel good to beat the AI on deity pangea doesn't it?! I doubt I would have made your date had I gone for domination (went for space instead). In fact, I bet it would have been over 1000 AD. I did not have trouble keeping up with the AI, but I couldn't quite get the gpt deals like you.

 

[AdrianE]

I crossed the domination limit at 1010AD.

I'd upload the game but the server gives an error.

After pruning Greece my knights, MI and catapults turned on China. Meanwhile Baylon continued their war with Greece. I took all of China's cities on our continent the cleanup the exhausted Greeks. I only saw a few Riders because China was building Sistines in their capital. I took Beging the turn after they completed it.

The turn Greece was conquered, Babylon demanded iron. (Apparently they were getting iron from China) I said no and the declared. I allied the spanish. The Spanish unique unit softened up an iron free babylon. My knights cleaned up. Babylon flipped back and cost me a few knights.

I learned MT late and waited a few turns to upgrade my knights. I ROP abused Spain, triggered a golden age and rushed libraries.

I knew I was going to win after the first peace with Greece when I took Athens. I had solid resources, veteran knights and the AIs were fighting amongst themselves without my prompting.

 

[I. Larkin]

Not sure that will able to write in detail, so in brief:
Domination at 510 AD.
After 800 BC had 35 turn war with Greeks. Left them with 1 City.
Had 1 GL to build Hang. Gardens. Got GA, and built lot of horses.

2 turns Peace.

Then 18 turn war with China. Kiled them.

3 turns Peace.

Use ROP abuse to capture Leonardo in Babilon. Upgrade Horses and killed Babs in a few turns. (Used false Peace, to get 1 tile's island cities). Kiled Spain in 2 turns. Declare war to Cartage and capture some cities, and domination came. Thats it...

 

[Twonky]

The Ancient Age
...was very troublesome. I had settled 1N and planned for a RCP 4 core. Before I plopped the second city, Carthage had already founded one on this ring! The worker was dancing with barbs pretty much all the time, and some ottoman warriors died to them early. When Hannibal approached my capital with a stack of ~6 warriors, I made an all-my-gpt for a tech deal in anticipation of an attack that never came. Thanks to this, I had to sell my Granary later - this could have only been avoided by a declaration of war on Carthage, which was not an option at the time. Research was horrible as well: I started with Pottery, but the monopoly didn´t pay off. After that, I wasted some on The Wheel...
Still, I managed to get some towns and train a few swordsmen. The first obvious target was Carthage, where the Pyramids had been built. It turned out that this civ was gassed already from constant fighting with other AIs, so I swallowed them completely by 350bc. The same turn I could buy Republic and trade into the MA, drawing Engineering for free and trading for Mono with it.

The Middle Ages
...went more as planned. I was first to Invention and Gunpowder but traded carefully to keep the tech pace slow. I made my core-cities productive and started building Horsemen, later Knights.
In 380AD Chemistry was discovered and, more importantly, Leo´s constructed.
MilTrad was finally discovered in 580AD. Commerce was switched to max gold and two turns later, I started the rolling. At this time, the world research had not even reached Physics, so the game never saw Riflemen.

 

[Marc Aurel]

Nicely done, Marc, sure does feel good to beat the AI on deity pangea doesn't it?!

Thanks, Crakie - Yes, it feels good having beaten Deity. Well, I had a good teacher in my SGOTM team, who is used to play on Demigod... and a lot of luck. Due to the peaceful times my AI's have had since 300 BC they had much money to invest in my techs. But looking at Twonkys result, I see now that there is also a shortcoming of this situation. Until 700 AD I was ahead of him in means of territory. But then I stopped dead before dealing with my much more powerful Babylonians. Each thing has its two sides. In fact most of my money (90gpt) came from them.

 

[klarius]

Open PtW

We entered MA in 1100BC, still researching republic. That was done 975BC and we revolted for 5 turns anarchy.
Our first war was with Chinese starting in 590BC. This ended 250BC when Spain destroyed them.
We were then at war with Greeks, Carthage and Babylon, because I had some peace renegotiations coupled with alliances (I had expected them to hold out a bit longer, but Greece and Spain finished them off pretty quick).
I then concentrated on Carthage. That lasted to 110AD when Carthage was relegated to a city on the big island.
I also had taken 3 Greek cities in the meantime, but now was preparing for Spain, where my knights could make better progress than in Greece.
This war lasted until 310AD when I could acquire the spanish one-tile-island city in the peace treaty. I also had gotten my first leader, who built the palace in Madrid.
In 410AD we reach military tradition (without any help from the lazy AI) and started to upgrade. I had hand-built Leonardos, so we had about 30 sipahis soon after. In 430AD we resumed war with Spain throwing them off the main continent in two turns.
450AD started on Greece. Greece destroyed 510AD.
A small pause and 530AD the Babylon campaign begins. In 560AD we are alone on the main continent and ship troops over to the islands (there are still a carthagian, 2 spanish and a bunch of babylon cities).

Last Babylonian city falls in 630AD for conquest victory in 640.

 

[FadeAwayNot]

CIV 3 - Conquest class

I lost my notes, so not sure of the dates. Carthage and Greece had been at war throughout the Ancient age and were at a stalemate. As the MA kicked off I joined Greece in battling Carthage. I took all Carthage's towns except their capital and a town on the island. Greece got the capital.

Greece got pretty high on themselves and declared on me. I took all but three of their cities and then they graciously gave me a bunch of techs to get caught up.
After I got Military Tradition I upgraded many horsemen and started building more Sipahi. I was planning a war with China when they declared on me somewhere around 900AD. Mao was crushed under the Sipahi onslaught. He was left with two cities on the island. Spain was eliminated quickly, as they had been getting beat up by the Chinese and Babs all game long. I took their three cities as the Middle Ages were drawing to a close. So as we entered the industrial ages, Greece had three useless cities, China had two useless cities, Spain was eliminated, Carthage had one city. Babylon, however, was strong.

The Middle Ages went beautifully, not threatened early on and I had become the world power by the end.

 

[ionimplant]

ptw, open

domination ~1060 AD, final score 9***. this's the first time that i got a score over 9000 and i'm very happy. i don't know whether i'll have a chance to get a score over 10000 before i completely convert to civ4...

after entering the MA with all the techs learned by capturing the great library, i was ready to take on any opponent. i chose Greece just because it's close to me. i made a fatal mistake here as i waited for AI to research techs for me since i was waiting for recapturing the Great library (which conveniently flipped backed to Carthage before teaching me education). therefore i built up my infrastructure too well in all my cities since i was waiting for the tech for knight to show up. for some reason, only Babylon was researching and he was researching only the top tech tree (which was ok for knights but not ok for military tradition). therefore i declared war on Greece very late after researching chivalry myself. and then since no one researched anything after enigineering, i had to start research myself (after waiting many turns).
but war proceeded very well, only a few musketmen showed up during the entire game. one interesting thing happened is that the JS Bach's cathedral was constructed in a pop2 city by Babylon:

it was later conquered by China. i got it as the price for peace and had to raze it because of the flipping probability.

my golden age didn't start until 900AD and i was still in it when the game ended...

 

[Redbad]

one interesting thing happened is that the JS Bach's cathedral was constructed in a pop2 city by Babylon

Probably built by a great leader. It is not very likely to be built normally in such a small town before 800AD.

 

[ionimplant]

Probably built by a great leader. It is not very likely to be built normally in such a small town before 800AD.

you're right! now that you mention it, i really wonder why this obvious reason didn't occur to me. i was thinking it must either be due to the unfair AI advantage or a series of wonder cascading that leads to a pop2 city building a world wonder (obviously i was playing too many 20k culture games)

 

[Obormot]

Predator.

I did the same as most people here did: beeline to MT & build Leo's -> mass upgrade -> world domination . I entered MA in 975BC, i had libs in all my cities, barracks in some of them and half a dozen swords. One of my towns was under heavy cultural pressure from the greeks, so i built some more swords and destroyed the greek town that they built in my ring, this eliminated the culture threat and allowed me to build one more city in the RCP4 ring, the greeks were away fighting the chinese at that time and were not dangerous. I usually hate to raze & replace, but this time i just didn't have the shields for a large scale war - needed to build infrastructure and the Leonardo's Workshop, so i made peace quickly. Apart from that small war i concentrated mostly on infra, my greatest concern was to get my cities to maximum size as quickly as possible, so i buitl aqueducts, harbours and granaries, irrigated most grass tiles to get to +4 or +5fpt and sometimes joined slaves that i bought from the AI. After that i built horsemen. I (almost) maxed-out the population around 500-300BC. I built Leonardo's Workshop in my capital using Colosseum and later Sun-Tzu's as a prebuild, it was complete in 170BC or so. At that time i already had >20 horses and some knights, i upgraded horses to knights (using money from selling techs, didn't even need to slow down research) and started the war against greeks with knights - there was still a long time to go before MT, despite rapid population growth and libs everywhere i couldn't research faster the 9-10 turns per tech - limited space and expensive techs (0.5 cost factor)... I disconnected the greek saltpeter quickly and only had to kill 1 greek musket. After greece i destroyed china, they had some muskets, but were the smallest civ and had cities <7 population - they suffered greatly from the war against greeks. I hand-built the FP close to my capital because i didn't wan't to rely on leader luck, but my leader luck was actually quite good, i got 2 early leaders, both were used to rush markets . But anyway i managed to squeese in 2 good cities that were at distance <=4 from the FP and i joined lots of slaves to get make them productive quickly, so i was still quite happy with my FP build. I researched MT in 310AD, the chinese war ended about at that time. I stopped research and upgraded knights, then i used connect/disconnect saltpeter trick to make sipahis from horsemen. I then easily steamrolled all the AIs with sipahis. At some point i connected saltpeter permanently and started rushing libs and settlers instead of upgrading - i decided to go for domination because of all those small islands. I got domination victory in 460AD.

The animated minimap:

And a funny thing i saw on the babylonian island:

A warrior army! Guess the AI will never stop surprizing me

 

[ionimplant]

And a funny thing i saw on the babylonian island:

A warrior army! Guess the AI will never stop surprizing me

hope you didn't ruthlessly kill that defenseless warrior army with your sipahis

 

[Obormot]

in 3600BC the greeks settled Thermopilae, which is their third city just about where i wanted to settle my second city! There is no way they could build a settler so fast even with the 50% discount on predator and they are supposed to get only one free settler on deity. There is definitely something wrong, they either popped a settler from a hut or AI starting units were messed up like in gotm46 where the AI got a settler instead of a worker on emperor.

OK, now i watched the replay and all AI civs settled 3 towns on turn 8. So they apparently started with 3 settlers instead of 2 (at least in the preadtor version).

 

[azzaman333]

OK, now i watched the replay and all AI civs settled 3 towns on turn 8. So they apparently started with 3 settlers instead of 2 (at least in the preadtor version).

The 3rd cities were also built very quickly in my game (open class).

Long story short, i was very behind in tech until i attacked the weakish Carthage and Spain. Caught up to Spain when Greece attacked. Being the superpower, greece plowed though my lackluster defense, most of my units were still in spain. Conquest loss 360 AD.

 

[Taxpayer'sMoney]

Ottoman GOTM 52, open, ptw.

I'm a bit hazy on the details...

Early Game

Early war with Greece. Attacked with about 15 swords. Reduced them to a single city without too much trouble.

Mid Game

War on Carthage - managed to knock them off my continent, restricting them to a single city way out west.

Late Game

....zzzzzz...zzzz...zzzzzz...What?! Where am I? Okay it looks like I made it to work. I played 6 hours straight the other night on this game and now I'm paying for it. It all started so well. Declared war on China. First two units into the fray created two leaders. Bosh, these poxy Chinese were going to be a doddle. And in some ways they were. My Sipahi (not sure whether this is plural already) made steady (if rather bloody) progress. I took four or five cities, sued for peace and then rebuilt. Couldn't get any techs in the deal which was frustrating.

Next round of war went nicely too...but then the problems started kicking in. One city flipped, then another, then another. They kept on flipping. Sheesh I lost more troops to cultural flips than I did to the Chinese military. Ack, there goes my army. Eek there goes another. Both to flips. So I slog on for a gruelling couple of hours...sending troops way back behind the frontline to recapture flipped cities. I try garrisoning the cities with troops to stop 'em flipping. Flip they go like pancakes on Shrove Tuesday.

So finally the Chinese are banished from the larger, starting continent. Yay for me? My military of 35 Sipahi got reduced to 30 by casualties and eventually to about 15 through flipping. All over the world you could see, armies once venerated for their derring-do sipping green tea and eating sweet & sour pork balls. They died as traitors.

Even more frustratingly Carthage, which is by now a city state as far out west as you can get had signed a mutual protection act with China. It used to be a force on my continent, no longer. I wasn't worried - they were a backwards country, so far away from me it's impossible for them to reach me to pose a threat. Flip goes a town. It flipped to Carthage - that's doubled the number of cities they have! In all I think three towns flipped to Carthage, easily recaptured but still they ate up the troops that were garrisoning them.

So it's 12:30am and flipped towns are recaptured, China is reduced to a single island city and I'm about to go to bed. Babylon declares war. They are strong compared to me. They take a couple of weakly defended former Chinese-former Spanish cities. Alright I'll just recapture those cities and take a couple of theirs to show them who's boss. That's easily done. But the flipping continues. This carries on and finally at 2:30am I have a continent cleared of unbelievers. Is this enough to trigger domination? No. For the life of me I can't figure out why. Opt to go to bed.

So it's roughly 1700AD, I have the large continent to myself. I am starting a period of rebuilding. Get my economy going, build a military (I have something feeble like 3 Sipahi). It was a painful, frustrating experience (in all I think I lost four armies to flips). In the end I was attacking with 1hp Sipahi just to get the job done. I had turned off animation, friend moves and enemy moves in an effort to finish things off and get to bed. It looks like I'll have to actually build some boats and land on their main island which is where I expect to find the fiercest resistance. Victory looks possible but it might take a good few moves yet.

Next evening

Okay, so I settle in for a couple more hours hard graft to get this game finished. My first victory on anything higher than monarch. Should be pretty exciting, heh? I have a cup of tea by my side, sleeves rolled up, ready for action. I have a well fortifed Babylon stronghold to attack, and no foothold on their continent. This could be tricky. Let's go. I press enter.

"Congratulations you have won a domination victory".

Oh, what an anti-climax. After six hours of "just one more turn play" on Weds, it appears that if I'd just played one more turn it would have all been over.

So lessons learned. Never garrison captured cities with armies. Next time I'll raze any cities without useful wonders, and have some settlers on hand to capture the land area. I had rushed libraries in the towns that flipped, however these seem to have been lost when I recaptured them. I came pretty close to jacking it all in several times, but pressed on and eventually it paid off.

I can see now that with a little more care (I have a very "loose" playing style which involved pressing enter till I had enough Sipahi to attack and not much else) I could have got a much earlier victory. Trouble is I'm not big on the planning, can't be bothered with micromanagement and am prone to doing really dumb things quite often.

I thought the early game was fun, and was impressed with the efficacy of the swords early on. The Sipahi is great, but the later game was a bit of a grind when I was attacking riflemen and recapturing all those flipped cities.