GOTM 79 - Final Spoiler

[neilmeister]

GOTM 79 Final Spoiler

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

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Did the maze map help or hinder you?
In what year did you win/lose/retire?

 

[Jastrow]

My first Diety win under "tournament conditions" (to borror an expression from Chess). I have beaten the level before several times in sandbox games, but with reloading or replaying of the map, or under cooked map conditions (marathon with a rush UU, etc.). Playing it honestly and under reasonably neutral conditions is just a tad beyond my level I think.

Did the maze map help or hinder you? I dont know... BOTH, is the simple answer, but which it did more is hard to determine. I certainly helped in that the distance to some civs was so enourmous that they could be diplomatically shuned without fear of them showing up with a real millitary treat. It however hurt for the same reason. The civs which I was millitary strong enough to consider attacking after my first set of wars were in positions that I could not possibly reach in a timely fashion.

In what year did you win/lose/retire? I honestly dont remember! I was so shocked I was winning that I did not even pay attention to the date... 18xx, I would GUESS.

What happened? I eventually took all of Freds land in a series of about 5 wars (I say all... Actually, he survived with a couple of small isolated cities deep in the south, which eventually fell to someone else, but I took his main spoke), such that my empire stretched from Roosy to Cathy.

I tried to tech monopoly techs and trade aggresively, and with this I managed to stay almost competitive in tech. Cathy and Roosy were always a ways ahead, but I was more advanced than the other cives for some time. I did manage to grab some of the key late techs in time, including Electricity and Radio, for example, which allowed me to trade enough to keep out.

I kept both these AI at friendly, which while not a garantee with Cathy, at least provided me some security... To do this, I shared a religion adopted from Roosy, while I stayed in Monarchy so that Cathy felt I choose civics wisely. I had +4 fair and fortwrite with them. Had given into a deman or two, stoped trading when they wished, and also had some mutual war for a while, since I had bribed them in against Fred. I also avoided trading with their worst enemies, and supplied them with resources (in trades). For extra security, I tried to keep cathy at war with VIcky and/or Monty whenever I could.

I tried to keep up in millitary for a while, but once I saw a stack of 15 rifles and caves enter my territory (on their friendly way through) a turn after I had built my first few grenediers, I knew that dream was over.

All I could do was keep everyone friendly, and as soon as he got the right tech, I made a defensive pact with Roosy, who was the score leader, power leader, and tech parity with Cathy. I then pressed enter alot, until he would agree to a permanent alliance. By this time, he had already built a couple of cassings, and I decided I would team up with him to build a ship. I tried to help... I choose a reasonable tech order, and trew in all my research (which was about 25% of his), and trew in a couple of bulbs towards the techs... He did the rest, including building all the parts.

I actually did build the UN, an had the option of wining diplomatically about 10 turns before the ship was ready (I was already secretary general, and had more than enough votes... with my team and Vicky). At this point however, the ship was in the bag, everyone was in another war, so I was safe. And for some reason, I decided I prefered a space win.

I will start the Nobel level WOTM soon... The tech past there is going to look like it is frozen in time by comparison.

 

[neilmeister]

My first Diety win under "tournament conditions"

Congratulations

Its always nice getting the first one under the belt.

 

[lymond]

Did the maze map help or hinder you?
In what year did you win/lose/retire?

No, the maze did not hinder me. The land did. (I probably never mentioned you are evil, did I? )

I retired in 250AD when Fred shocked me with a DOW. I was in no position to defend, even though he only sent one Phant toward my pig city just East of Germany with an archer and sword just behind.

My plan was to go culture and I was just about to easily finish Sistine. I was doing reasonably well in tech.

I tell you, it is something how fast Roos expanded in my direction. Although perturbed that he settled the stone city I wanted, I really did not realize how far he'd come or how many cities he had until my scouting warrior/wb got near Washington. Wow. Just unreal. The fact he settled stone that far with cities in between before I got my 3rd settler out is shocking. Meanwhile, he stole GLH out from under my nose. bahstahd!

I guess I should have settled East first, but AIs can so easily hop settlers over on galleys with his map, and I really did not want to lose that gold and horse. Plus, gold is more useful the sooner you work it.

Still, culture victory was very reasonable despite the suspect land.

I settled Horse fish first to the south, with a city planned later in between. Then settled marble/wine/pigs, took a barb city just south of that and settled 2 more cities around the curve towards Fred.

Cathy DOW'd on me but sent no units. I bribed Monty and Biz on her and then made peace later. Those two did nothing to her as far as I could tell.

I was pleased with Fred at one point, but as Spiritual I flipped around religions to take advantage of OR at times to build stuff and get out mishes. I guess at some point when Fred and I were in different religions, he got the idea to attack me. It's harder to see this stuff on Vanilla. You really have to check everything each turn. Funny thing is I gave into a demand of Fred's like the turn or 2 before he attack. Alas! No peace treaties in Vanilla.

Well, could have been a fun game I think and reasonable culture win, but the pacifist Fred had to get all pulp fiction on me.

 

[Conquistador 63]

Some may say Deity with PA enabled is not a real Deity game, but then again, who cares?

Cheesy or not, I abused neil's generous setup (peaceful neighbors + faraway Monty ) and focused on getting the PA ASAP. With some tech bulbing and lots of tech trading, I was 1st to Lib (took PP) in 540AD. Beelined Communism and learned it in 1000AD.

Thanks to shared phony wars vs Monty, I was able to get a PA with Fred (who was 1st in score) in 1070AD.

From then on, it was just a matter of building and teching to space. Launched in 1750AD, for my first Deity GOTM win.

 

[zamint3]

I was in big trouble at 1AD when I got DOWed by Frederick while at war with Bismarck, but 3 things saved my ..., heavy whipping, bulbing philo to bribe Roosi into the war and foolish AI who kept coming with smaller stacks.

Teching was OK, but I had to get rid of Fred, so I took Nationalism from Liberalism and was first to cavalry. After taking 4 cities, I cease fired the same turn he learned Rifling and instantly upgraded a dozen LBs.

I had Roosi bribed into the war again and signed a DP right after peace was made. Next I bee lined Facism and one turn later it turned out that Roosi and I had had the 40 turns of shared war or DP needed for a PA. Now I only needed him at friendly and what happens, he pops up demanding Facism, I give it to him and he is the friendliest person on the earth and sign a PA...

From there it was a cruise to space, with me designing the tech route and doing my fair share of research, and him building all the parts.

First time with PA for me and I had a few unexpected observations: 1) I got the benefit from Roosi's GLH and Colossus all game through. 2) Some tiles I had lost, due to cultural pressure from Roosi, I got back when the PA was signed.

One more thing, having more than one of the same country can be quite confusing:

Spoiler :

I've got no idea who she is talking about:

 

[Xcalibrator]

One more thing, having more than one of the same country can be quite confusing:

Yeah, that happened to me, too. I consulted the diplo screen and figured the odds suggested she was talking about Fred so I obliged, but I held my breath to see what I'd done. BTW, maybe everybody else knows this but I didn't: if you hover over the culture bar in a city screen it tells you the probability of suffering a cultural pressure revolt! That saved me a lot of guessing (although I had to park a lot of units in some cities to keep them from flipping to Cathy).

Anyway, I got me my 2nd xOTM Deity win (in a row)! 50881 pts for Domination in 1914. No PA cheesery, either, mostly because I didn't beeline the required tech(s) and generally lack the diplo skills to pull off anything requiring friendly AI. But if they can't love me for who I am, then kill 'em. Hats off to all those Space wins! I can't keep up in tech with the Deity leaders and instead leveraged my production advantage; I was 1st on that score by around 1000 AD.

As I mentioned in the first spoiler, at 1 AD I was just about to DoW Roosy and that went pretty well. I took peace after capturing a few cities, regrouped, and then finished him off. Cathy was the tech leader but relatively small, while Fred (and Vicky) was also up there in tech and getting quite big--had to take him out before he got too ugly. Bismarck was also big but strangely lagging in tech; I bribed him a couple times into war against Fred and once against Monte. Monte was not a factor in this game--always behind in techs and squashed between Cathy and Otto. After Fred I took out Victoria, but Cathy's culture squeezed the life out of most of the core English cities I captured--one flipped, and London was reduced to its central tile for hundreds of years (eventually gaining a couple disconnected water tiles), but I held on for dear life there to keep the Kremlin.

After Vicky, Monte went easily and then it was time to go for Otto, who'd gotten rather large and was now about even with me in techs (not least because of all the bribing/trading I'd done with him). Man, those panzers are nasty! Fortunately I had numbers on my side, although he mostly controlled the seas. I was 2 turns from taking his last two iceball cities in the south when I semi-accidentally tripped Dom--I had the culture slider up to 70% to deal with the WW. One city I'd recently captured had 79 red faces! I toyed with the idea of going for Conquest (figuring that real war mongers will crush my Dom date) but Cathy was way up there in techs--she got Apollo in 1630 and was making me pretty nervous for awhile, but I think she was still shy of about 4 Space techs at the end. I think I could have beaten her down but I didn't want to take the chance of her launching.

Never played maze before. A bit tedious since I had to mostly move my units by land, but it simplified warfare in that there were fewer fronts to control, and it was easier to isolate the AI on different branches since they're not very good at amphibious warfare, particularly in Vanilla. I probably wouldn't choose to play such a map for fun, but I think it made Deity a little easier.

Congrats on your semi-first Deity win, Jastrow! From reading your other xOTM reports, I'm sure it'll be the first of many here. And yeah, Lymond, I couldn't believe how fast Fred and Roosy expanded toward us when I watched the replay!

 

[Jastrow]

Congrats on your semi-first Deity win, Jastrow! From reading your other xOTM reports, I'm sure it'll be the first of many here. And yeah, Lymond, I couldn't believe how fast Fred and Roosy expanded toward us when I watched the replay!

I dont know... The gap between immortal and deity seems insanely huge to me. The speed of the expansion here was case in point. On Immortal, I would likely have been able to, with exactly the same playing, cordon of AT LEAST twice the land I got here, and maybe quite a bit more. Where Roosy came from to cut me off is simply scary!

 

[The-Hawk]

Decided to try a quick game right before the cutoff. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate PA's? I got one with Fred and was sailing to victory... when suddenly he decided to stop building spaceship parts and build more "useful" things like supermarkets and battleships . Unfortunately, Roosevelt did not stop building parts, and launched in 1816 AD.

Fun game, had a scary moment when Vicky DOW'd. Luckily, I was already in a defensive pact with Fred and Cathy. I was able to whip some cavs to kill her initial stack, then she couldn't reach me from the other side of Fred.

Maze seemed to make this easier... room to expand a bit and no real barb issues. In hindsight, I probably depended too much on the PA, I never expanded beyond my initial 5 cities. Maybe I should have gone after someone to expand. Also, I probably would have been better off with Roos as a partner, but the religions did not work out that way.

/Edit: Almost forgot, one other piece of bad luck... got three straight Artists at < 20% odds in a row. So much for bulbing...

 

[Cactus Pete]

I had the artist problem too. That was frustrating, but the most irritating thing in this game was the beaming of my units out of Victoria's territory when we signed a PA. What is the logic of that?!!! Never signed a PA before, so wasn't prepared for it. Took me about ten turns to get units back in position to attack Monte, because loaded galleons were sent on the other side of the maze. Nonetheless, much appreciated the different map and options.

Interesting to read about all the tech trading. I was not able to do much of it, and had to gain tech through peace negotiations in the second half of the game, because the Ais all feared that I was becoming too advanced (which I wasn't). Didn't anyone else have this problem?

Dom'n in the 1700s.

Given the possibility of a PA, the maze made the game easier because diplomacy was simpler -- just had to be nice to close the neighbors and potential Pa partner -- and you could declare war on distant civs and bring in partners without much risk. Without the PA, the maze would have been brutal because you couldn't get to the distant AIs before their tech could get way ahead.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

'Twas a fun game. Of course, I went for Domination and pushing units around the map only allowed me to finish now, a couple of days after the submission deadline.

Challenger 1820 AD (Turn 200) Domination Victory.

I settled on the Plains Hills square and without an initial exploring Warrior (the Challenger penalty) to help spawn-bust, I saw a Barb Archer really early--something like Turn 7!

I expanded to close locations and made a run for The Great Lighthouse. I almost had it but got beaten by Frederick. As a result, I missed out on some of the easier-to-settle City locations to our east and some of the not-too-hard to capture Barb Cities that spawned in the same area.

I did manage to sneak in a Crab + Copper city in the west, which got me a much-needed strategic Resource.

I also settled a City in the midst of Bismarck's area, but then Vicky declared war on me and razed it. She also captured my Crab + Copper city. However, then it was only a matter of time (and with help from the Russians and Germans) that she died.

Of course, Monte wasn't going to let me take over the world at my own pace and declared war on me. I bribed in Bismarck and then Bismarck pwned Monte by having been the only AI to have Cavalry for quite some time.

I captured a dual Holy City right out from Bismarck's nose, only to have Monte recapture it and then Bismarck steal it out from under my nose during the "in between turns" period of time. Sigh.

Still, I managed to get most of Vicky's Cities and Monte's capital, so I was finally getting a bit of land under my control.

Then, Bismarck did me a big favour and learned Communism. At this point, I could have easily gone for Diplo, as I had all of the surviving AIs liking me a lot and only Cathy could have declared war on me due to everyone loving me so much (and Cathy being willing to declare war even if she loves you to pieces, sometimes literally). However, I didn't have a Great Engineer in sight and I would have had to have waited for an AI to learn Mass Media, as my tech pace was pathetic.

So, I decided to go for Domination and joined up with Bismarck, who already owned much of Monte's previous lands.

I took a while to build up some stacks on Cathy's border and then declared war. I lost a few stacks but Bismarck eventually got his bum in gear and we took her down city by city until she was eliminated.

Frederick was next, but he was a tough nut to crack, having had Infantry while I was still fielding Maces and Cats. I lost a city to him that had been fighting a long, prolonged Culture war, and he decided to raze my city. Oh well, I one-city-challenged him and rebuilt my city for the extra land area.

Roosevelt was 2 Spaceship parts away from victory when enough land area kicked in to give me the Domination victory.

It was a fun, thrilling, and challenging game, yet it was also reasonably fair thanks to the maze and a relative scarcity of Strategic Resources, both of which gave the human player certain advantages at certain times (Vicky stuck it out with Archers for a long time, Cathy had no Horses for Cossacks, Frederick had no Coal to keep him from building Railroads, etc). It was a great map that made for a great game! Thanks a bunch!