GOTM 58 Final Spoiler

[Cactus Pete]

GOTM 58 Final Spoiler

Reading Requirements

Stop! If you are participating in GOTM 58, then you MUST NOT read this thread unless

• You have submitted your entry

Feedback on the game concept and map are welcome. Hope you enjoyed your game.[/

 

[adrianj]

First spoiler is here.

Ths situation at 1 AD is I have just researched Calendar (which I later regret since it obsoleted the Stonehenge I captured from Asoka). Saladin, Asoka, Hatshepsut and Cyrus are all dead.

1 AD -> 500 AD

Mansa does have some nicely cottaged land that would pay for itself. And sure, he has powerful archers, but he hasn't built enough of them. Time to whip the mongolian hordes into shape. After declaring in 300 AD I take 2 of his nice cities including the capital, then in 500 AD I take peace for a few techs. Reinforcement keshiks and elephants are on their way, so I'll finish him off soon enough.

500 AD -> 1000 AD

Geez 10 turns feels like an age! In 700 AD things are ready, and Mansa is dead in 720 AD. I'm thinking of going for domination now - should just be a matter of producing lots of settlers and covering the land mongolian brown. It sure takes a long time... and there is ALOT of bare ice out there. I'm building nothing but settlers, and I have them all sitting in position where I'll settle them all at once.

In 1060 the mass settling begins. 39 settlers all plant cities at once. I'm losing 181 /turn, and only have 193 in the bank. What will happen? Presumably every single unit I have will go on strike and be disbanded. I wonder if that includes roaming settlers?

Hahaha! I'm losing units, including newly built settlers and I Don't have enough land!! (~55%) I don't think I can possibly recover from this situation. My only hope is that in a few more turns the new cities borders will expand a second ring and put me over the edge.

Oh dear... I've produced a GM. I'm sending it toward HC to try a trade mission, but no idea if it will be disbanded also. Tt seems not. Ok, I have a plan. 1) use the trade mission to get some in the bank. 2) Build a bunch of settlers simultaneously and send them to the wastelands above Incaland - 3) hope that they get there before my money runs out!

Ok. It's 1340 AD, I have 5 settlers about to be produced next turn. Lets do it! Unbelievably, I can actually get the deficit to a manageable -2 /turn (idiot - why had I not done this 2 centuries ago!) by assigning merchants pretty much everywhere. I think this could actually work

Brilliant In 1460, Cro-Magnon Khan has won a Domination Victory!! Score of 72806. Sheesh, that was ridiculous!

Feedback on the game concept
I quite liked the idea of a stone age game... but the abundance of horses and elephants made the decision making much too easy. We are mongolian. Horses are within reach. Map maker tells us the AI cannot build spears... What is a boy to do?
Surrounding AI capitals with rivers to add defense was pretty clever - kind of the equivalent of putting them on a hill. Was that even done on purpose or did it just seem like it to me?
The massive areas of arctic certainly made domination tricky - at least for me. As clearly I underestimated how much land I needed!

 

[Cactus Pete]

River defense was added in some cases.

 

[neilmeister]

Killed off Hatty in 150AD, Sally 300AD, Cyrus 520AD, Inca's 840AD and it took me another 200 years to finally kill Mansa's last city, which he founded in 'Greenland'. Conquest victory in 1010AD for 85K.

I was way to conservative and slow. Didn't attack HC until I had about 15 Keshiks ready at his border. What really caused me grief was the bloody elephants. Keshiks were just slicing through everything until they met the first elephants!

Didn't even notice that the map was 'Earth' until almost the very end.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Didn't even notice that the map was 'Earth' until almost the very end.

Yes, northern hemisphere circa 18,000 years ago as best I could make it in a reasonable amount of time.

 

[kcd_swede]

Asoka dead ca 1100BC; Hatty dead ca 700BC; Saldin dead ca 250BC. Then the long haul to the Americas... Inca dead ca 700AD. But I started attacking Mansa while Inca only half gone. And I started killing Cyrus before Inca was completely done, too. 3-front war is very tedious. But when the AI can't build any defenders except archers... no big deal.

I should say that Inca built like 3 War Elephants before I pillaged all the mammoth camps. So a couple cats had to be whipped, but no big deal (WE don't get defense bonuses, but they do get collateral damage).

Cyrus had 1-2 immortals in addition to his regular archers. Again no problem or strategy planning needed.

Mansa got LB before I could finish him off, and so I didn't have quite enough units in place to finish him as fast as I would have liked. He only got about half of his skirmishers upgraded because this is Noble level. Skirmishers themselves were a bit tougher than I had anticipated... but he hadn't built enough of them. Because of the semi-stall at the LB's when he had 3 cities left, I had to whip some more 1-move units and wait for them to arrive, but by then the Keshik stack from Inca-land had returned and it was all over. Or was it?

No, I had taken what I thought were Mansa's last 2 cities in 1160AD, only to discover he had settled another city that I couldn't find on my map. (I had not realized the northern hemisphere earth map until the replay came up). I had already deleted my only galley which was needed to get Inca-Japan city. I sent all my Keshiks in different directions to explore the map (I did make cease-fire and tech Paper and adopt Mansa's religion to try and buy his map, but who's his worst enemy do you suppose? ). Anyhow, I get lucky as my +1 visibility keshik spots the last stinking 1-pop city out on Greenland. Switch to USuff because can't whip a galley from my 1pop cities nearby, had to cash rush them. Stuck 2 Cavalry on 1 galley and kill 2 LB's without even unloading them first. Game over 1360AD, Conquest, 92000+ points.

That last city pissed me off, btw. Cost me many turns on a game that was already won in the BC era.

What I should have done to win faster was to explore more and earlier. I had wiped out 3 AI before unfogging my northeast coast and finding a route to Inca. I had thought up till then that I'd need to go to Astro to win. Had I found Inca earlier, I could have killed him a LOT earlier, before he spammed more cities (he never made it to florida, but did get one in South Carolina). That's too far. If I had started the war say 200 years earlier, I'd have finished him about 600 years earlier when he only had 3-4 cities. Then I'd have wiped Mansa before he got LB's.

Oh well... its hard to put a lot of efort into it when its all just logistics of moving units around the board and hitting the "whip" button frequently; and its fairly likely that one of the usual warmongers will win Conquest in the BC years. Whats a handful of turns here or there for a 2nd tier player like me? Nothing. Exactly nothing.

Map feedback: I did not recognize the map until the replay screen. That's good, because I prefer unpredictability. I did recognize that the map was strongly nerfed to encourage conquest over domination... lots of dead space. Inca should have had a trading partner over there so he wouldn't be so backwards when we find him. Had he a lovefest that filled out the Americas, he could have at least put up a fight.

Concept feedback: No hills simplifies the game too much. No longer do I have to figure "is it better to work the mine or work the food and whip?", because now the ONLY option is to work the food and whip. And chop till the sun goes down. Also, lack of metals means you don't have to find a way to deal with counter-units like spears. War Mammoths could pose a problem, except by the time the Noble level AI get Construction the game is already decided. And nothing pillages camps and pastures like a Keshik. Also, flat terrein means archer defenders are weaker than usual, as all cities will be on flat. What's the poiint of giving us a great early UU and giving the AI no way to defend themselves against warmongers? Also, had Space Race been an option, I think I'd have just switched to that after taking enough cities and then face some interesting decisions as to how to best get a spaceship in a metal-free world. So I do not understand why this VC was turned off. What was the thinking there?

This one was fun up to about 700BC. The rest was just be tedium of optimizing whip and logistics. IMHO.

Thanks for the game... a bit of an experiment apparently. That's the thing with experiments, though, they don't always turn out the way you want, maybe. Keep experimenting, though... at the low levels many of us need some incentive to think about the game in new ways.

 

[neilmeister]

I have to say I liked to concept and the map. I am curious if this was originally designed for a harder level ?

I feel that turning off space VC was just a way of saying to us that the choice was conquest or conquest, which was good, because how many people actually play conquest on Vanilla?

Unlike the Swede, I got lucky when I saw Mansa's galley loaded with a settler, so it didn't take me too long to find the last city. The problem I had was that the lone longbow defending it killed the first 4 Keshiks and getting promoted. I ended up sending my best troops and whipping several more galleys just to make sure.

Well, with Befudlov and this, CP has given us one really hard game and a really easy one. I wonder what will be next.

 

[kcd_swede]

Yes, northern hemisphere circa 18,000 years ago as best I could make it in a reasonable amount of time.

Was the Ocean tile adjacent to land tiles on the east coast of Japan intentional?

 

[enKage]

Diplomatic in 20xx xD Me (Asia+Africa)+Persia (Europe) vs Inca (America)
Just in case Cyrus abstained - cultural would be achieved in 2049
Mansa survived on Greenland (?)

I was too lazy to go to america

only about 7k points, but it is a little better than former gotm :] who cares points - play for fun, BTW - still learning how to play

 

[MarleysGh0st]

Thanks for a great game with some interesting surprises, Cactus Pete! For the first time playing a GOTM, I think I've achieved an early conquest victory that might be in the same league as our perennial leaders.

Contender Class:

I settled Karakorum 1S. Early research path was A.H. -> Agriculture -> Archery -> Pottery -> Mining -> Masonry -> B.W. -> H. R. I produced a worker, first, followed by a settler. When scouting revealed horses near Asoka, the settler went 1N of them to grab them before he did.

I DOWed Asoka in 1360 BC, conquering him in 950 BC. The war against Saladin started in 750 BC, ended with his conquest in 675 BC.

In 500 BC I built the Oracle for the CS slingshot, having researched COL one turn earlier.

I conquered Hatty in a war from 425 BC to 250 BC. Then, from 100 BC to to 100 AD, it was Cyrus's turn. A GS bulbed Philosophy, which gave me Taoism, not that this was important.

Mansa Musa would be next--but where was Huayna Capac? I hadn't completely scouted the continent and I was assuming he was at the western end of the continent, but he wasn't there! Somewhere around this point, I discovered that curious channel of "coastal" hexes going east. (Strange, but I always thought the early movement limitations were related to the difficulties of navigation away from the sight of land and not to the shallowness of the water. ) I also discovered the land bridge and assigned two or three workers to building a road across that.

The Malinese War lasted from 200 AD to 600 AD. Then everything (mostly Keshiks, with some cats and an elephant or two) headed east across the road that had just reached the Incan border. That road would look like a parade route for the rest of the game.

The War to End All Wars began in 740. I had finished researching Optics, expecting that I'd need Astronomy for some galleons, but a GE helped me research Engineering in one turn; the increased road movement was more useful than the galleons would have been. By 1000, the last Incan city falls, giving me a Conquest Victory in 1010, with 88,778 points.

 

[pnp_dredd]

I went for a cultural victory, mainly because I ran a horse-based war in a recent xOTM. My legendary cities were the original capital, the Riverside Horse city, and Delhi. I ended up bombing Artists 6-0-6 in those cities, for a 1700s victory. Had three religions completely spread and just one Islamic cathedral. With 3 cathedrals, a few early wonders (+20 base culture), a settled Artist (music), and the Hermitage, the Riverside Horse city was a monster, ending on >75,000 culture without any bombed Artists. Poor management there.

I was too slow to take Delhi (aborted chariot rush, then waited for Cats), and missed too many wonders (particularly Sistine).

I never really found a good GP farm site that had hammer potential, and built the National Epic in a 5-specialist city. Perhaps should have waited and rush-bought the NE on "Japan"? That would have been pretty late though. I had Parthenon, and created Artists from at least 5 different cities.

I enjoyed this different game. The changes made culture a bit difficult! There were not many river sites, and lots of 1-food tiles. I think I managed my forest chops fairly well, and built the Mids for post-liberalism US rush buying.

 

[WelshGandalf]

Well this was my first "rush military early" game, 2nd ever GOTM, picked up a few tips from my first one & tried them out.

Quite an easy map to rush wars early on, since there were no spearmen. It was going well until my economy died a horrible death just as I was closing in on currency & then code of law. 10 more turns at 50% sci & i would've researched them both & been OK, instead I spent about 50 turns on 10% or 0% science as I had ran out of money, I also stopped attacking as I wasn't sure I could afford any more cities (now I think about it, I could've just razed them...)

In the event because of this & my lack of experience it took a lot longer to wipe everyone off the planet (a stack of grenadiers in the end!), especially as some of them had settled on islands and I had no city on the Atlantic for ages Well, I felt I learnt some stuff at least.

I have to say, I loved adrianj report, completely bonkers Oooh and I also love this smiley!

 

[Mitchum]

Cultural Victory - 1615 AD - 27,018 points

I continued my cultural game as described in the first spoiler here.

Per my typical cultural game, I built 2 more cities after 1 AD, bringing my total to 10 cities. The bulk of the game after 1 AD consisted of building missionaries for my 4 religions (I got Hinduism late in the game but never did anything with it), building temples, building culture / culture multiplying buildings in my three legendary cities, and generating as many Great Artists as possible.

I learned Liberalism in 425 AD and took Nationalism as my free tech. I revolted to Free Speech and set the culture slider to 100% while I slowly researched my way toward Printing Press, which I didn't learn until 1540 AD in a tech trade with Mansa Musa (I had about 75% of it completed , so it cost me > 1000 gold).

I generated a total of 12 great people + 1 free Great Artist from Music. I messed up and settled the first GA in the capital. I settled the second GA in Delhi (captured from Asoka), which was my Hermitage city. I also got two GSs (both built academies - first one early for science and second one late for cultural output only) and one GPro (settled in the capital). The 8 remaining great people were all artists, which were bombed 2 - 4 - 2. My cities achieved legendary status on turns 230, 231, 233.

The lack of hammers made building all of the cultural buildings in the legendary cities difficult. I could have used the whip, but I wanted to keep my citizens working the cottages to ensure that they were towns as early as possible.

Another challenge in this game was to keep the culture slider at 100%. I typically end my cultural games with > 1000 gold, which is wasteful. This time, I hovered around 100 gold the entire end of the game using trades, begging and merchants to keep the slider at 100%.

To get some extra gold this game, I nearly completed Angkor Wat in four different cities using a ton of Stone-enhanced chops. I then gifted my Stone to Huayna Capac so that he would complete it sooner. This netted me about 1400 gold in 1480 AD. This is the gold I used to buy Printing Press from Mansa Musa.

Thanks for the fun game!!

 

[adrianj]

To get some extra gold this game, I nearly completed Angkor Wat in four different cities using a ton of Stone-enhanced chops. I then gifted my Stone to Huayna Capac so that he would complete it sooner. This netted me about 1400 gold in 1480 AD. This is the gold I used to buy Printing Press from Mansa Musa.

Nice game Mitchum. This move to part build a stone wonder and then gift the stone to HC was genius I love it!

 

[Conquistador 63]

Excellent game, Mitchum!

Regardless of getting roughly the same Lib->Nat date (500AD), as I was too slow to capture Legendary #2 and #3 from Asoka (early AD's), I finished more than a century later. I had gone for Saladin's crap land before, can't remember if due to bad scouting or plain bad gameplay.

Damned Asoka denied me CS from Oracle, building it before 1200BC (on Noble!) to get Alpha. I had 3~4 religions (founded Confu/Tao and got Buddhism/Christianism from Asoka's cities), 9 cities and got 10 GA, bombed 2-4-4 IIRC. There were also 2GS (academy, bulb Philo), 2GP (settled in capital) and 1GE (rushed some wonder).

Nevertheless, a fun and quick (RL) game, nice game concept, CP!

 

[Mitchum]

Regardless of getting roughly the same Lib->Nat date (500AD), as I was too slow to capture Legendary #2 and #3 from Asoka (early AD's), I finished more than a century later. I had gone for Saladin's crap land before, can't remember if due to bad scouting or plain bad gameplay.

My legendary cities were my capital, one I settled on the river by the ivory, horses and rice and then Delhi. I agree that Sal's land was crap. I only kept 2 or 3 of his cities (all were auxilliary cities primarily to build temples) and razed the rest.

Damned Asoka denied me CS from Oracle, building it before 1200BC (on Noble!) to get Alpha.

I finished the Oracle in 1280 BC. I could easily have been just 2 turns away from losing it myself. Without the CS sling, I'm sure that I would have finished more than a century later than my actual date. You had a lot of ground to make up!!

Nevertheless, a fun and quick (RL) game, nice game concept, CP!

I wish I could say the same thing. For some reason, Cultural games take me a long time to complete. I spend a lot of time planning out all of the logistics related to missionary and temple building, great people generation, culture output growth and predicting / optimizing my end date. In the end, I probably only save about 5 to 10 turns, but I just can't get myself to let these tiny details slide...

 

[The-Hawk]

Diplo through domination. By the end of the game, I was in complete control of Asia/Europe and had about 70% population. Hyuana was still going strong, Mansa and Asoka each had one city on islands, and the rest were goners. I saved a bunch of trees in one city (prechopped them all) and built Mids and HG in another city to get pure GE points. With the GE and chops, I was able to build UN in one turn. Final victory date was 1460 AD, score was 70K.

Unlike some of you animal lovers who wanted to keep your wolf for a pet, I decided to send mine off on a headlong rush into the FOW. His mission was to scout until dead. I fully expected him to become a bear snack early on, but it I figured that would be a fitting end for a stone age wolf. Somehow through the whole game he managed to survive, ultimately exploring the whole map. Way towards the end, Hyuana's borders trapped him in North America, so I sent him down to the tip of the Baja California peninsula to retire and take in some rays.

I enjoyed this one a lot. I like non-standard games and this map definitely had the feel of Stone Age. The volcanos and pet wolf were nice touches, always a reminder that this was a different world. Nice job Cactus Pete!

 

[cabert]

a took a run on this one, 1 warrior rush, 2 or 3 keshik rushes and a cavalry rush later it's conquest in 1575 AD.
Not too brilliant, but I didn't even plan to play it, so let's be happy about it.

 

[HuginogMunin]

Ok, only spoiler and I try to keep it short. Noble difficulty is new for us, so we had no idea what to expect from the AIs.

Normally we *only* play peacefully, but given the difficulty we thought we may try for once the get some "lebensraum" early on. Our warrior attacked Sala as soon as it saw the border (turn 5-7 or so) thinking the city might be undefended and was surprised 2 not only find a warrior, but (the next turn) an archer. Custom made AIs started with an archer each? Anyway the warrior eventually died, and when we saw Asoaka was the one sitting on the good stuff anyways, we made peace with poor Saladin.

2nd city (Beshbalik) build early by the plain river horse. Nice spot. After some fast raxes, we rushed ("DOWed"? what does that stand for btw??) Asoka with only chariots to grap his sweet land. Captured 2 cities, but he had 1 left we didnt see. Made peace with Asoka 1680BC.

We made the tempting decision to only use chariots since there where no hills and HBR were kind of a detour from the CS slingshot we craved for. What they lacked in strength, they gained in numbers. We never regreted this decision.

Capital and Besh now both built settlers to found 5th (fish/crab/fur/silver) and 6th (2xdeer + fish) city, and for a while we only produced eco buildings. Chariots were send out to meet all AIs. Also built Oracle (CS around 1300-1400 BC), Stonehegde cuz it was so cheap, and chopped Pyramids in captial after CS and Math. The tundra rendered many tiles near useless, so Repr. felt like a viable choice.

Somewhere in the area 300-600 BC we attacked Saladin with chariots and whiped him out (took 2 cities, razed 1, killed 1 settler). No hills ftw , Capac will obviously run against us due 2 his large and food-rich area, so we decided 2 befriend the 3 remaining AIs. Rest of the game went pretty straight forward. Built Hanging Gardens (stone), Great Libr (...Repr...) and TGL (the more I play, I realise to *allways* build this one, even if you dont think its worth it - it probably is!).

1 AD stats: 9 cities, sustainable 300 beakers @80%, have Edu, Printing Press and aiming for Astro.

1st GP: GE (saved him for a looong time for the UN wonder)
2nd: GS (Academy cap)
3rd: GS (used on Electr)
4rd (from Physics): GS (used on Electr)
5th: GE (kinda overkill for the UN, but saved 2 turns on it and some pop)

One amusing fact about the power of a Noble AI: I made peace with Asoka as early as 1680 BC and no one touched him since. At the end of the game, in 960 AD, all he got was a size 3 city (with a fish he STILL hadnt built a WB for). Great.

 

[adrianj]

Well played game HuginogMunin, and nice writeup

DOW stands for "Declaration of War". How this came to be the common term for it I have no idea. Especially DOWed, meaning Declaration of War-ed, which makes no sense at all