GOTM 64 Final Spoiler

[adrianj]

I played a pretty sloppy Diplomination game. A complete self vote win in 1872.

I basically got very upset with Louis for declaring war on me really early on. After eliminating him somewhere around 200 AD I played very peaceful for a while up to taking Nationalism from Liberalism. At that point, somewhere around 1600 AD I went into war mode and eliminated Elizabeth with catapults and drafted muskets, and soon after Izzy was relegated to a single tile peninsula near HC's border.

Huayna was pretty huge, and I didn't really plan on taking him on, since he got to Rifles way before me. But with Biology and an empire wide push for max food I managed to get about 64% of world pop all on my own.

Cheers for the game CP. The early war was a real challenge for me, but it was fun overcoming it

 

[Mitchum]

After eliminating Isabella right around 1 AD, I pushed north to take on Louis (down to one island city in 600 AD) and Elizabeth (760 AD). I then shifted my army south to take on HC (down to a single one-pop city in 1070 AD. From then on, it was founding cities to fill in the holes and waiting for borders to pop. Domination finally came in 1150 AD.

My wars were never too tough, with axes/jaguars against Spanish archers (+musket/conquistador) and then macemen/cats against archers/longbows in the other wars. My logistics were pretty bad, which added quite a few turns to my game. I moved my army south (Spain), north (England/France) and then south again (Incan). I was shooting for a pre-1000 AD finish but didn't quite make it.

Thanks for the fun game, CP.

 

[Chazzz]

First post, first GOTM and a resounding... 1992 Cultural Victory. In truth I gave far too much respect to the competition for their early advanced units, as Ronnie1 said above. I settled in place, sent my second city south and saw Izzy settling on the Yucutan tip with my scout. Decided that it was necessary to cut her off, so my third city went south-east again, cutting Madrid off from any other mainland site. She took the Caribbean islands and even sailed around me to settle later on, but I culture-flipped it and she was largely a non-force in the game because of it. Then again, she settles her city some 360 years after the other AIs, so that also had something to do with it.

Despite nearly losing the whole game to a barb archer early on, I think I played well to 1AD - I would have posted in the first spoiler thread, but I was having so much fun I think I was into the 1800's before it occurred to me to check the date... Started a little early wonder spam due to the availability of the stone, which was when the idea to go for a cultural victory took hold. In truth though, I was set up just fine for conquest/domination, and when I realised how backward the AIs were I went all out for cavalry to over-run them.

Those of you that have played the map might spot the flaw... Once I realised there was no horse, I got annoyed with myself, took out Izzy anyway, and then just maxed out the culture slider for the rest of the game. Wasn't my only glaring error by far, though the other main one (trying to get Oxford with only six cities) I put down to the fact that I didn't know the conditions were different on large maps. It was a score even Herbert Hoover wouldn't be proud of, but at least it had the dubious distinction of being my first cultural victory...! If I'm going to name one thing that I am proud of, it's the way I handled diplomacy - no-one DoWed on me for the whole game, which must mean something.

In truth though, whilst I really enjoyed the map and the unique start, I found it a little easy. I'm not a very good player (Prince is about my level), but for whatever reason the AI's really didn't seem challenging at all. Maybe DynamicSpirit is right, and the early techs just messed up their tiny little minds, as the carefully play-tested opening builds that Firaxis had programmed into them were replaced by wild delusions of grandeur. Still, many thanks to Cactus Pete for making my first CivFanatics experience such an enjoyable one.

 

[Mitchum]

Welcome, Chazzz. Congrats on your win. If you haven't read it, check out Jesusin's cultural strategy guide. It's guaranteed to improve your cultural victories!!

 

[Chazzz]

Thanks Mitchum, pleasure to be here. Thanks also for the article, the good ones about Vanilla are often buried way down in the archives and hard to find. Sounds like Jesusin would have spat out his drink if he heard that my building the 'Mids and GLib were what made me think a cultural victory was on!

In reality, nearly everything I've learned about Civ IV has been from TMIT's videos on YouTube. It quickly taught me the value of whipping, chopping, and other game mechanics (also wisecracking for fun and profit!), but mostly it taught me that the meticulous accuracy that is found all over the forum is not absolutely necessary to play well at high difficulties. That's prevented a lot of rage-quits, and given me a lot of fun games as a result.

 

[Holy Cheese]

Time loss 2050AD for me.

I started out well enough, attacking Louis to my north and quickly taking Paris. I took peace for a tech from him while gathering new forces to continue the attack. Eventually I forced him off the mainland leaving him with just an islad city off the coast.

Next up was Liz, also up north. Sge had settled 2 cities in the north west and 2 in the north east. I used the same tactic and took her 2 north western cities before taking peace and a tech again.

Meantime I had adopted Izzy's religion and was at friendly with her, and managed some tech trades.

As soon as I got rifles I went after Liz again but was dismayed to see that by this time she had Redcoats - lots of them. My small force was nowhere near enough to take her so I snuck back over the border and made a very late start at an attempted cultural victory. Too late, as it turned out, the game ended with Huayna Capac having a higher score than me and that was that.

Really enjoyed this scenario, and I didn't find the advanced starting units of the AI to be too much trouble.

Cheers
Jack

 

[babybluepants]

940 AD Dom, 96k

I didn't attack anyone until 150 AD, but by then was set up for overkill (ended up having 50+ maces and 30+ cats just a bit later). New Orleans and Florida went down quickly. Took peace for Theo, as Louis had hopped to Cuba. Then it was England and Spain at the same time. Easy, except for some losses in Madrid (the Conq refused to get injured for a while).

Then it got ugly in my last set this morning. First I miscalculated the tiles, and rushed to bomb my Music Artist in a really bad spot (around Columbia with a pile of coast, instead of Cuzco), forcing me to conquer 2-3 more Incan cities and drop some extra settlers down there. Then, with mere turns remaining, a lone wandering Quechua razes my undefended pop10 3-border-pop city in Nevada. For good measure, it also takes out a settler there. :suicide: Have to scramble to get 3-4 new settlers there and pop their borders. Can't go into Slavery, 'cause I need Caste artists...

Hope someone crushes my date by at least 10t. 4-5t would be just painful.

edit: Great setup , CP, thx. I don't play many low-level games, almost forgot how fun it is to just rampage through quickly.

 

[Mitchum]

940 AD Dom, 96k

...

Hope someone crushes my date by at least 10t. 4-5t would be just painful.

I was thinking the same thing. Thanks for crushing my date.

Even though I started fighting Isabella sooner (axes + jaguars), I got to macemen later due to losing my gold mine for 15+ turns because of the early pillaging barb archer entering my culture with only a single warrior in my capital for protection. On top of that, my war logistics were bad with too much back and forth.

 

[babybluepants]

Yeah, losing the gold and delaying CS is what slowed you down, I guess. I'm thinking that it should be possible to take out Madrid and mainland France by 1AD with axes, while still teching to Maces and Cats by then. LB's didn't show up until closer to 500 AD, so it's probably possible to circumvent them altogether. Even with my late start to conquest, better logistics (I had 15 too many units in London, for instance) and no stupid mistakes would result in 700 AD easily. Sub-500 should be doable.

I'm wondering what techs they started with... CP?

 

[Cactus Pete]

Yeah, losing the gold and delaying CS is what slowed you down, I guess. I'm thinking that it should be possible to take out Madrid and mainland France by 1AD with axes, while still teching to Maces and Cats by then. LB's didn't show up until closer to 500 AD, so it's probably possible to circumvent them altogether. Even with my late start to conquest, better logistics (I had 15 too many units in London, for instance) and no stupid mistakes would result in 700 AD easily. Sub-500 should be doable.

I'm wondering what techs they started with... CP?

Nothing more advanced than stated in the game write-up -- Writing, but not Alpha, for example. AI techs slowly at this level. Do you have something specific in mind?

 

[babybluepants]

I guess I should read the pre-game more carefully then.

I was surprised they all had Compass and Theo so early. Also, they seemed to all get Feudalism around the same time (even HC), while skipping techs that probably should've preceded it (such as COL, MC, maybe even Currency, don't remember exactly).

 

[Mitchum]

@CP Did you do anything to make the barbs enter our cultural borders sooner than normal? I was surprised when the barb archer entered my borders ~T40 (2280 BC).

 

[Cactus Pete]

@CP Did you do anything to make the barbs enter our cultural borders sooner than normal? I was surprised when the barb archer entered my borders ~T40 (2280 BC).

Think this was a function of having no barbs as an option, then placing some on the map. Testing did show barbs entering culture early. Usual rules didn't apply. Very interesting about the archer that early. He must have taken an almost direct route to get to you that fast. Never came close that early in testing. I only had warriors, scouts, and panthers anywhere nearby because I didn't want to penalize players badly for making normal assumptions regarding barb behavior. Archer started much nearer London.

 

[Mitchum]

Archer started much nearer London.

My guess is that said archer got plucked off by a musket in many of the games. I recall reading at least one other spoiler where a barb archer entered the capital's culture quite early. To be honest, I quite enjoyed the challenged. It's not every day that you get to fight off an early archer attack with a single warrior and almost non-existent production (at least on levels below deity). I don't recommend whipping warriors too often, but sometimes you have to bend the rules a little. I lost the gold mine but at least I kept my corn farm in tact.

Now, had I lost my capital, I might have complained... after throwing my keyboard across the room, of course!

 

[Ronnie1]

I lost my gold mine pretty early also....I eventually waited for the archer to get on the corn, and then I attacked him with 2 or 3 warriors. He never even threatened my capitol.

 

[Chazzz]

Yeah, I lost the gold mine as I recall. Don't remember how I took him out, though... Might have gambled the game on him attacking the capital, actually!

 

[WelshGandalf]

I too lost the gold mine to the barb archer.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Well, guess I inadvertently found a way to make a Prince game more challenging.

 

[adrianj]

The tricky things you added to this game were really excellent CP. I would definitely encourage such trickery for all GOTM games - especially for the Challanger save. Thank you

 

[donsig]

Spain settled on the Yucatan in my game, too. Not much of a game for me. Barb archer took my undefended capital before I even made my first settler.