GOTM 74 Final Spoiler

[neilmeister]

GOTM 74 Final Spoiler

So how did your game after 1AD go? Tell everyone and discuss in this thread, subject to...

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Did you have fun?
Did you learn anything?

 

[cas]

one city 1500AD diplo.

I was hoping for a little more war-mongering AI to make this a challenge with one city, but still fun overall and a fast game (for me).

Everything went as planned except for an extra prophet or two rather than GSci. Last great person was an engineer, though...a couple of turns before I finished Mass Media, so that made up for it.

Roosevelt was such an obvious UN opponent in my game...even in the BC timeframe.
1) he founded Buddhism - I founded the others (excluding Islam...too late to matter) and he didn't spread it aggressively.
2) he had the most land to settle/expand...although Mansa was probably close if he had better food.

I had some negative 'you refused to help us' and 'you traded with our worst enemy' diplo modifiers because Cyrus and KK couldn't get along...even in the same religion. But I was still able to win everyones' votes in the end with all the positive diplo modifiers.

No wars against me. One raging warrior barb all game. Easy coast to victory. Could have shaved off a few turns with less missionaries (build research) and a little better tech path at a couple of points, I think.

Thanks for hosting.

cas

 

[Murky]

Finished with a 1675AD Domination win. I'm a bit rusty at playing Vanilla.

 

[Ronnie1]

I'm a bit rusty EVERY MONTH when I load up vanilla. I was particularly rusty with vanilla at this level and wasn't quite sure what to do with a massive tech lead so early in the game. I settled on the PH to the south and built worker > settler and settled my second city about T35 grabbing Cows/Wheat/Marble to the west. Stayed at 2 cities for a CS sling, eventually killed Persia with WAY too many Cats/Axes/Spears and then settled into a 9 city 5 religion Culture win very late in 1816. I accidentally used a Great Artist on a Golden Age forgetting to move him away from the GS and the GP that I wanted to use. I teched way too far and didn't get into Caste/Pacifism soon enough because I was whipping too many Cathedrals in my 3rd Legendary city which was also my GP farm. A great map for the level really as our starting land seemed to be quite inferior to the AI's.

 

[-Asterix-]

Settled on the southern PH for a nice cottage-bure-capital. Thus, starting techs went something like Wheel -> Pottery to start cottaging flood plains quickly. Next step was CS sling around T60 after which I went to Construction to start snatching neighboring AI cities. Didn't see any barbs (or maybe one warrior, can't remember) as AIs were close and few quechas handled rest of the fog.

I decided to concentrate on score this time and didn't hurry with wars too much. Cats started to do their job while I kept research up and my eyes on Biology. AIs were really gimpy and their archers with few axes here and there fell easily. Alex was my last opponent and he was the only AI to get longbows (or anything better than archers/axes/swords). Too bad for him that he got Feudalism only a turn before I finally attacked him around 1100ad. Actually, I could have went cavalry vs. archers easily in this game if I wanted but instead went for Bio for score milking as cats were enough to pummel everything on my way.

Finally got domination in 1180ad with some milking included. It'll be interesting to compare scores with those early dominations and conquests that we will definitely see here.

Throughout the game, happiness issues were handled with HR and loads of quechas/chariots. Hell, I even used a bunch of those chariots when I attacked Alex in 1100s. Couldn't resist the urge to find out how many C1/unpromoted chariots it takes to kill a phalanx fortified in a city (with a result of "many").

 

[damnrunner]

1800s botched culture win. In a mid game war I foolishly left my GP farm/ #2 culture city with only a Quecha for defense. I recaptured it soon enough but had to switch civics and slave a decent number of units. So foolish.

 

[PattonTwo]

Was a good learning game for me. My pre AD start was a slow rush and after AD I built up elephants and took out Persia and the Mongols. After finishing them off I realized I had a significant tech lead and belatedly decided to go for a domination win. 1900 AD - probably 1000 years later than many will have accomplished.

This was a good lesson in focusing on a direction early and sticking with it. I was way too scattered in this game but found it enjoyable.

 

[billybgame]

1894 space race....doubt I'll be in the top half. I took out Cyrus and nearly took out Kubla, but had 14 cities, a huge tech lead, and a narrow area to pipeline any attackers through. So, decided to go the the peaceful route, even though I could have slaughtered them all, I'm sure. A pretty good space date for Noble....I will take it, even if it's not a high score here.

Had 14 cities after my conquests, and after missing out on the early wonders, built almost all the later ones. No one ever declared on me.....lucky for them

 

[Hsinchu]

I finished a dom win about the same time Murky posted (almost 1700AD). I took the Challenger save and note that on Noble, it's not quite as intimidating as I thought it would be.

Spoiler :

Hit Cyrus early but not efficiently and used Kublai Khan to catch up in city number, I accomplished quite a few feats early on including multiple religions and Oracle but I think I was too eager to DoW and wasted opportunities to blitzkrieg.

Alexander was useful for keeping the continent in a constant warlike state. My experience with Noble difficulty is that the AI is terrible at making proper strategic decisions and can almost never mount a reasonably worrisome counterattack. Always having war did cause happiness issues, but the map was so gracious with luxury goods (if you went domination) that I didn't even use HR until it became a moot point.

The only time I lost a city was because I wasn't paying attention otherwise the AI and the barbarians never mounted an offensive that had any significant statistical chance of being an inconvenience.

 

[MarleysGh0st]

1520 Domination Victory for 81,712 points.

The game went easily for me, but my wars almost always seemed to be incomplete. Having started a war against Kublai Khan in 200 BC, I took his border city and his capital, but he still had one city to the northeast of Hatty's territory. I had bribed Hatty to join the war, so I took Monotheism for peace in 200 AD, hoping that Hatty would finish him off. But they made peace in 500.

I went to war against Darius in 425 and captured all of his cities to the north of my territory by 780, but he still had a captured barb city in the center of the continent, an island city in the far east and a city on the ice south of Roosevelt, so I gave him peace for H.R.

I went back to war against K.K. in 880 and finished him off in 920.

I went to war again Hatty in 960. Shortly before capturing the last of her continental cities in 1180, she settled one of the islands to her south. I hadn't built any ships, so I gave her peace for Drama and Music.

I went to war against Alexander in 1230, bribing Mansu Musa to join me. By 1340, I have all of his mainland cities, but he still has two islands to the north. I give him peace; once again, my ally fails to finish him off, although they remain "at war".

I went back to war against Darius in 1350 and took his central city.

In 1390, I went to war against Roosevelt in 1390. By 1480, I have his mainland cities, but he's got two islands to the east.

By this point, I could have just waited for the cultural boundaries of my captured cities to expand and push me over the domination limit, but I decide to boost my score by attacking my friend, Mansu Musa, as well. Is it "milking" the score when a "good" score for me is no more than a quarter to a third of the game leaders?

I capture two of M.M.'s cities. I go back to war against Hatty and capture her last island, and I go back to war against Alex and get one of his two islands, befofe the border pops give me the Domination Victory in 1520.

I'm wondering what difference it might have made in my score if I had delayed the Domination win by a few turns to complete a Conquest, instead? I hadn't seen much need for ships, so I had delayed getting Astronomy until 1490. When the game ended, I had three galleons crossing the oceans to go after those isolated islands and my land forces were closing in on M.M's two remaining cities. I could have razed a city or two (and skipped some late settlers who claimed some empty southern islands) if the Conquest would have been a higher scoring outcome. Would it have been?

 

[damnrunner]

I did a replay for a domination win around 1400.

I tried the tactic of spamming early Quechuas and camping them outside AI capitol cities to expansion. It worked fairly well but probably would have made more sense at a high difficulty. As it was even the AI I did not camp out next to never teched past archers, axes, and HAs (and a few eles/cats at the very end). I probably would have been been better off just focusing on early expansion and then capturing the cities. But I did get some insanely high xp units. One was in the 30s!

Also would have been wise to get open borders with Egypt early on and march an army over to capture USA cities (no skirmishers or phalanxs). An early base of production in the far west of the map would have been really useful for quickly taking out on Mali and Greece in the endgame. Also would have helped to drop settlers on the ice islands to the south.

 

[Greeder]

Domination 1660 AD.
@MarleysGh0st: I 'milked' by attacking Americans for city with 2 wonders in last turn
540 AD Cyrrus
1170 AD KK
1040 I attacked Hatty
1100 stole Worker from Alexander.
1430 finished off Hatty on continent.
1490 bribed Mansa to DOW on Roosevelt but he was faking a war and made peace 1550. As I just finished Alexander on continent, I went for Mansa.

I had huge tech lead whole game, finished with Infantry and MGuns. Easy game, but REXing and rushing are still my weak spots, so my finishing dates are far from impressive.

 

[neilmeister]

Its really pleasing to see posts from some new players, and some classic old ones.

 

[-Asterix-]

I'm wondering what difference it might have made in my score if I had delayed the Domination win by a few turns to complete a Conquest, instead? I hadn't seen much need for ships, so I had delayed getting Astronomy until 1490. When the game ended, I had three galleons crossing the oceans to go after those isolated islands and my land forces were closing in on M.M's two remaining cities. I could have razed a city or two (and skipped some late settlers who claimed some empty southern islands) if the Conquest would have been a higher scoring outcome. Would it have been?

Around 1500ad it's getting so late already that final scores start to drop unless you're conquering ok-sized AI cities with good pace or you have dozens of fast growing cities (preferably with Biology and/or food corporation in BtS). On the other hand, though, score doesn't drop too fast at that stage so I guess that if it would have taken around 5 turns to get conquest and you would have gained a city or two in the process, your final score would have been around the same. Probably best way to check this is to continue your game from the latest save and go for conquest instead. Not sure if the final score keeps changing once you have already won the game but if it does, you could continue from your uploaded save, take those last cities and see what happens.

 

[kcd_swede]

I settled in placce, did the oracle-civil service sling. Got maces before longbows were around, and took all of Persia and Mongolia. The last city captured right at the time xford U was being finished, so I just played peaceful from there on out. I figured no war would be efficient enough to make up for the loss in infrastructure-building time.

Liberalism for free Industrialism.

The main drawback to my game was that I was unable to get into Representation until very late (after Rocketry, tbh). I also took forever to get an academy... my first five GP's were Prophets... I kid you not. All from oracle (and then settling them didn't help). Angow Wat made sense at that point, to make even more of them. I was making profit from my prophets while at 100% science, at least. Extra hammers is always nice.

Never used HR civic. Late into Repr. Never got Communism or Democracy so slavery to the end, and Free Trade, no USuff. Delaying Liberalism took away a lot of turns of free religion, as well. Never used a religion... but probably should have gone Pacifism and Judaism... but just didn't have the energyu to deal with diplo silliness and spreading religion to the necessary cities.

racle, GLib, Space elevator, 3GDam, HGardens, ND, AngWat, Broadway...


As a result, I was disappointed with my time. But then I looked in the HoF and see that for Noble level/normal speed/standard size, 1864AD is not at all bad. The lack of trading partners makes noble level take longer than higher levels that I usually play at.

ne interesting things: I demanded a technology from the Persians before declaring war. They gave me the technology, so I figure, K, I'll get the Mongols first. But guess what? No forced 10turns peace for giving in to demands in vanilla?!?! I declared war on Persia as originally planned. Same turn as getting the free tech. I really was pleasantly suprised about that.

 

[neilmeister]

One interesting things: I demanded a technology from the Persians before declaring war. They gave me the technology, so I figure, K, I'll get the Mongols first. But guess what? No forced 10turns peace for giving in to demands in vanilla?!?! I declared war on Persia as originally planned. Same turn as getting the free tech. I really was pleasantly suprised about that.

5 Prophets, thats harsh. But demanding tech & DoW, that is having your cake and eating it too.

Space was long my favourite and most competitve VC, I think your biggest issue was very late Representation. With an empire made up of several former AI's, the amount of specialists you could have run would have made a big difference to your tech rate.

 

[zamint3]

HAs and cats, with the help of some veteran axemen, did the job...

I did build two WE but they were still on their way to the front when the game ended.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

As I said in the first spoiler, I lost my second City early on but I stuck to the course and played out the game to a Domination Victory.

I also stuck to my theme of no Cottages (even though we had a Financial Leader ).

Alex was my best friend for most of the game. As I was marching on enemy AIs' Cities, he would help out by pillaging the Cottages (and Hamlets, Villages, and Towns) and cleaning up the odd roaming AI unit of the defender while I took all of the Cities. Whatever Cottages he didn't get to, I was sure to quickly Pillage myself.

Alex was the last to go and then all of a sudden, I found myself tripping the Domination Victory without really having to settle any of the Settlers that I'd been building and starting to carefully position.

The Pyramids did not get completed by anyone in my game although I did capture the Sistine Chapel, which helped with Cultural Border expansion.

I didn't even make it to Liberalism and found that Maces/War Elephants/Cats were as far as I needed tech-wise.

I could have razed a city or two (and skipped some late settlers who claimed some empty southern islands) if the Conquest would have been a higher scoring outcome. Would it have been?

Score is independent of Victory Condition. Score is dependent upon factors like Land Area controlled for at least 20 turns, Population, Wonders, and Techs.

Since Conquest would have likely meant you settling less Cities, you would have had to have captured more population than the number of Cities that you settled, due to each late-settled City realistically only contributing +1 population point.

Ever turn that you spend to win also reduces your total Score by a bit, so again, had you needed more turns, you would have needed even more captured population to make up for it.

Now, had you settled all of your Cities on the turn that you conquered, as far as I understand it, you would have randomly received one of the two Victory Conditions that you had satisfied and would have received an identical Score, regardless of which Victory Condition you were credited with.

 

[Conquistador 63]

I settled in place, since it looked a very nice site for a large bureau capital. I would need to have such a city, as playing for Culture was my original plan.

Like others, I got CS from Oracle (1480BC). From there I went Alpha/Math/Construction to get some Persian cities, then build cultural stuff. I was already harrassing him from with quechuas since 2000BC, so he wouldn't connect horses.

But Hattie ruined my chances of a decent culture finish date by building a lot of wonders in her capital (SH, Parthenon, Pyramids you name it). Now she had to pay for it, I scrapped my cultural dreams and decided to go for yet another conquest-powered space race.

I took Cyrus, KK, Hattie and Alex's lands. Early Rep from Mids, Bureau, Slavery, later State Property, and early OR and later Pacifism running Confucianism were my civics.

I got OxU really late (close to 1000AD), but Colossus and GLH were surprisingly effective for a pangaea map, and probably made up for it. Delayed Astro as long as possible, and took Bio from Lib (920AD).

I ended up relying a lot on farms/specialists/workshops/watermills, and much less on cottages (not as radically as Dhoomstriker, though ). I ran 4 golden ages to help, since I got a ton of Gpersons from pacifism.

I didn't pay much attention with micro in the end, but still ended with my personal fastest space GOTM finish ever: 1665AD.

Thanks for the game, neilmeister!

 

[Falabello]

After 1 AD:

- Made peace with Cyrus for Monotheism, Calendar and Horseback Riding.- (250 AD)
(reamaing only Tarsus)
- DOWed on Kublai Khan (450 AD)
- DOWed on Cyrus again (700 AD), captured Tarsus (780 AD), so Cyrus is dead
- DOWed on Hatshepsut (840 AD). Made peace for Code of Laws and Theology (1120 AD)
- DOWed on Roosevelt (1160 AD)
- DOWed on Alexander (1605 AD). Made peace for Divine Right.

- I built some Wonders: Notre Dame (1300 AD), Angkor Wat (1555 AD), Taj Mahal (1615 AD).
Several others came from main conquered cities: Athens, Memphis, Thebes and Washington.

- Except Cyrus, all other civilizations had smaller cities outside the continent. So peace agreement was made with all of them in exchange for technology.

-So, my first victory! Nothing so absurd by the level, but this is the way!!!