GOTM #8 *Spoilers* Thread

My game is going reasonably well till now (about 1500AD). Started of with an early military strat in mind and set science and luxury to 0%. Founded a few cities and send of a few warriors to explore. Opened a few huts, got one tech, one warrior and nothing (not even maps!)

So things went along pretty quiet. Build up some archer military and was the bought my way in the tech tree. Got lucky when I got map making cuz the french, russians and english hadn't shared their maps yet. This really amazed me since normally they throw every bit of knowlegde at each other at every possible moment for crazy prices.

Was ready for war with the russians when I got 6 or 7 barb uprisings. This whole uprising thing drained my coffers and i decided to settle the rest of the continent quickly before this got worse. This temporary change in strategy made my conquest of the continent taske much longer in the end and probably cost me a lot of points.

After the settling of the continent I took out the russians pretty easy. During the russian war the english demanded tribute and declared war when i refused. Got an alliance with Joan and finished the english. In the meanwhile the english and french made contact with the other civs. They were about as tech advanced as we so no real problem there.

The Chinese started kicking some Indian #*ss So i gave away my two former english north-island cities to them and donated iron and some lux to them. When the chinese and indians made peace ungratefull ghandi still was annoyed with me. I think this was because'trade agreement' ended when he lost his last mainland harbor city. I personally think this is a bug in the program, I GIVE away resources, Ghandi loses his OWN harbor because of his military incompetence. This forces him to retreat to the island I gave to him and now he's mad anyway. Don't think I'll try diplo this game :)

Although I had been very nice to JOan al the game and bought a lot of techs from her somehow she changed from polite to furious. Built up my military again, got mil. trad. and decided to go for france. France got MPP with China, so I got MPP with Japan. Started the war with france and sent the other continent in war with me :)

The French war is going very well mainly because off the stupid AI. Joan keeps sending her armies for the undefended/Poorly defended cities just behind my front line, well garrisoned, cities. So for me the wat started waiting for Joan's troops to pass a frontline city, bombard the troops and finish them with cav. Now I'm razing her cities easily. Japan and china are bashing each other senseless so although I'm still 0% science I'm not far behind in tech and forced everybody out of republic. I think I will have razed france in a few turns. I'll be alone on the large continent and will build up my cities (I got only 2 libraries and still don't have a marketplace :crazyeye: )

ProPain
 
My game is going ok :)
I settled on the river, and built a warrior. Sent him south exploring, and quickly found the russians. I was a bit worried at how close they were, and surprised that they were not very advanced (poor starting position). I therefore thought I’d try and knock catherine out early – the cities to be gained from conquest should make up for the “slower” expansion on my own part. Built a barracks and a couple of archers, and sent them off. By the time they got to Moscow, I think that Catherine STILL only had two cities built. Moscow fell easily, (only one spearman). I healed my troops, had another newly-built one join, and went for St Petersburg, leaving moscow defended by my original warrior. Took that as well for the loss of a single archer. I found that Russia had one other city, defended by only a warrior, so I took that to knock Catherine out completely. At this stage, I had two elite archers. I noticed that the French were to the southwest. The nearest city was defended by only a single warrior. Well, “faint heart never won a fair lady”, so I attacked and took the city (I let it get to size “2”. I was a bit worried though, as I had few troops in the area. I was still building them in Berlin, but that was a looong way to travel. I waited a couple of turns, and sued for peace. This I couldn’t believe – Joan gave me ALL her money and ALL her cities for peace! Suddenly, Joan had a major setback, and I saw an opportunity. I rushed archers in all the former russian towns, and sped them towards paris. By the time they got there, Joan had made two more cities. I broke peace, and attacked paris, getting a GL in the process! This was used to hurry the pyramids. I took two more of joans cities before suing for peace. At this stage, she was effectively out-of-the-game -> left with a single city in the middle of the tundra. My early conquests meant that technology suffered somewhat. When I found ‘Liz, she was well ahead of me. However, removing russia and france meant that she wouldn’t go so fast, as she couldn’t trade for tech.

With the pyramids, I turned to maximum expansion. I pumped out settler/spearmen combos from a coupld of cities, along with the odd worker here and there to claim as many luxuries as possible, and to try and keep ‘Liz in the west. I started the FP in the former Moscow. I wanted to finish Liz as quickly as possible, so made a beeline for fuedalism and on to chivalry. Liz demanded chivalry, I refused and she declared war. Fortunately, she was slow in sending troops across the mountains, and only attached from the northwest. I lost one city before I bribed for peace – I gave up chivalry, but by that stage I had a few knights, and Sun Tzu’s was well-on-the-way. I finished SunTzus’s and built a knight army. At this point, Liz was “furious” and walking all over my territory. It wasn’t a difficult matter to start a war!

The FP had been finished in Moscow (speeded along by rushing a courthouse), and a few cities down south were pilling out knights. I moved these in to attack Liz’s south-east cities, whilst another group of knights attacked / defended my north. Up north, Liz had a LOT of archers, longbowmen, swordsmen and spearmen. I used hit-and-run tactics with my knights to keep her in check, but we ended up trading a couple of cities back-and-forth more than a few times. However, my forces in the south met almost no resistance. There were only one or two counter attacks even. I was bee-lining again for cavalry. I was hoping for a golden age when I used a leader to rush Leonardo’s (as I hadn’t got one with SunTzu’s). Not to be. However, I had taken about ½ of Liz’s lands when I got military tradition and upgraded. Liz didn’t last much longer. At this point, I had an army of cavalry, and was building the Heroic Epic.

I found that following all my warmongering, I was well behind China and Japan in tech. I had discovered them earlier on (lucky galleon seeing japanese shore), but it wasn’t until the latter stages of the war with england that we could trade luxuries. I swapped a few luxuries for tech from china, but the prices were going up, fast. I felt that the only way to keep up was to get them fighting each other. I paid for a MPP with China, and got Japan to attack me. I pretty-much stayed out of the war completely (the only troops I tried to send to Japan were sunk by Tokogawa’s massive navy :( ) so my skirmishes were limited to the little islands up-north. I got GL though, and saved it for the TOE. I bee-lined to that, sold scientific method for lots of techs and GPT, and rushed the TOE. Now I’m ahead in tech. The TOE gave me a golden age. Now I’m selling techs for very high prices, and running towards Panzers to attack the Chinese – as far as I can tell, there is only one source of rubber on the other continent, and Japan has it!

One thing that has puzzled me is that NO-ONE has yet researched democracy! I’m still in monarchy, and waiting for Panzers before I go back to get it. I'm well on the way to building the Hoover Dam, and am withholding electronics from the AI, until I am 1 turn from completing it;)

In the interim, I’m clearing jungle like mad, and really kick-starting my production with factories in all my largest cities.
 
Well, I've got the last Chinese city trapped on a very poor tundra zone (to the north east). Getting the continent prepped for some real milking(jungle totally gone by 1400AD,railroads taking good shape, almost 400 workers, plus slaves), my early estimates were probably on the low side.

CB
 
almost 400 workers, plus slaves),
Click to expand...


My god that is a lot of workers!!!:eek:

I don't think I had more than 60 at the most. I am still trying to finish up the game, but I am in the milking stage
 
Well, this game is going to take longer to finish than I thought. I am in the process of milking the score at the moment and it will take me a while. Here is a brief synopsis of what has happened so far.

I started the first city right at the starting position. I then began building settlers and warriors as fast as I could while setting my research rate at 100%. I beelined it to Literacy and began building the Great library. As soon as I had that I shifted taxes to 100% to upgrade my warriors to swordsman. It took a while before I went to war. There was a lot of room to expand into and I took advantage of that. Eventually I grew tired of the peace and attacked Russia. She was not very strong and lost several cities before giving in to peace. I was able to get communication with all of the other civs as part of the peace trade. I then began my second wave of expansion, filling in the rest of the territory and gaining a strong foothold on the newly acquired territory from Russia.

I had a huge amount of area and as it turns out almost all of the saltpeter resource. I needed it for my Calvary, but I could afford to trade it away to France for a while. I had no plans on attacking the French until I had Tanks. I was in no rush. The French gave up a fortune for the stuff (Furs, 60 GPT, and a tech). Somewhere in here I attacked the English with Knights and the Russians again for more territory.

All the while this was going on I have been trying to clear the huge JUNGLES. They are finally gone, but it took forever!!

Once I got to tanks it was time to get my Golden Age started (I love having a GA late in the game, you get things done so much quicker) I quickly eliminated the Russians and the English, and then moved in on the French. After gaining a good bit of Territory I let them have peace for a bit (I am staying in Democracy) I then absorbed the new parts of the empire, and launched another campaign against the French. They should be gone in another turn or two.

It is 1830 and there are a lot of turns left to milk the game. This was the first time I have played the Germans and they Panzers make them a lot of fun.
 
Anyone try with just the optimal number (16) of cities, or is everyone going for world domination? Is it really that disadvantageous to exceed the optimal number? And if you do, can you raze a city or cities to put you back to the optimal number and escape the corruption penalty?
 
I'm in the 1840s. France is knocked off to an island in the north. I really don't want to bother with them. I want their 2 techs but they aren't giving them to me, even though I just thrashed them. English were eliminated with Panzers. France was tougher. Decided to wait for Modern Armor. Made alot of panzers and upgraded them.

I really spoiled myself in the France war. Used nukes a bit too much, as if they regular artillery. Basically nuked all their cities except 3. Something like 12 cities nuked. Then just walked into their cities. The war started off tougher, but then I lured their massive stack of mech infantry towards an unguarded city, and nuked it.

China and Japan are on the other continent. Neither has started their spaceships but finally made peace after over 50 turns of war. There was one Japanese city that was conquered and reconquered by the two sides over 15 times! Not exagerating as my destroyer watched the whole spectacle. Even though China was more powerful Japan pulled through towards the end, and many Chinese infantry were killed against a few Japanese mechs.

As of now, I'm not going to really bother with China or Japan but if they start building the spaceship, I'll fire off some ICBMs and destroy them. I have about 60 modern armor doing nothing at all at the moment.
 
Wounded Knight,

In these GOTMs, the score you finish with is so important that I do not even consider the optimal cities number in any strategy.

Your score is predominantly based on the number of tiles of terrain that you possess and then the number of happy, content, and specialist citizens that you support.

Because the your score is actually an average of the per turn scores for the game, you can maximize your score by having the largest possible territory as early as possible in the game. The only way to have a significantly larger territory is to have more cities.

For the 16 cities number, I can figure that even at the maximum terrain spread factor you could realistically support you could only cover 37 to 45 tiles per city and that would only give you about 640 tiles of territory compared to the domination limit for this map which is somewhere between 1640 and 1700 tiles of territory. The domination limit reflects the maximum amount of territory you can have in your empire before the game "shuts itself down" by engaging a "victory condition".

Since winning is not the only objective, that is why I think you see so many players going for game strategies that include 3, 4, and 5 times as many cities as you might expect if you just used the optimal cities numbers.

Another factor in gameplay is the city size 12 limit, that can technically be crossed with by building a Hospital but for many practical purposes can cause game shutdown due to population generated polution that cannot be totally eliminated.

Many power players use city placement that only expects to have cities of size 12 and smaller just to avoid the extra maintenance costs of hospitals, mass transit centers, and the extra workers you have to keep around just to fight late game pollution. Smaller cities demand tighter placement if you wish to pursue the points that come from the population side of the game score equation.

I have yet to see a player submit a game that strictly adhered to the Optimal Cities number and resulted in either a high score or early game finish in any category.
 
I started the game yesterday. The position is mediocre, many jungle, forest and plains. I set up a four city archer production and started pruning the other civs at the continent. Wow, the archer rush rocks in that game, and Germany is THE civ for it. I succeeded to vassalize all three other civs. The Japs built the Lighthouse and sailed over in the early ADs. Made contact, traded maps and leveled tech. The barbarians are driving me crazy, but I think I have the worst behind me. Masses of uprisings, I stopped counting them when it were five. My guess is 10 or more.

It's 1000AD now. The continent is mostly blue, with orange, pink and brown spots. And a few green cities, as the Japs succeeded to sail settlers over. Since I concentrated on expansion, I am slightly (2 techs) behind. But I am by far the most powerful and am sure that will pay off, once I build up my infrastructure.

Got 2 leaders so far. Gave both FP and Sun Tzus in Hastings. I could've built the Sistine, but bleh!, my cities are pretty tight packed and won't grow very large anyway, so happiness won't be a problem.

Fun game so far. Geez, except the barbs ;).
 
Well, it is 1764 and I survived the French onslaught. they took several of my cities and I had to give up another for peace. I lost the forbidden palace and heroic epic!:mad:

BUT, I have rebuilt the epic and I'm working on another FP (in a better location :) ). Also, I did make it to electronics and used my saved leader to rush Hoover Dam. (Take that you French pig-dogs! hehe). One of my cities has has already reverted back to me and I also had another size 12 Russian city join my republic! (This was the second large Russian city to do so!) (hehe).

One problem is I don't have any coal!:mad:

Well, monarchy is still a difficult level for me but I like the GOTM. I would have thrown in the towel when the 2 French SoDs came at me but since I want to keep my streak of submissions going I stuck it out. Since I survived at diety I should be able to survive here.:D
 
It looks like I'll be stuck in Republic through to the end. Since I no longer require fast workers and lower corruption will not effect my final score (too much) the change over to democracy is too expensive. I've moved my cities around on the other continent to make reasonable use of luxuries and available arable land. Now that I see how my developments panned out, I'll have to raise my estimated final score from 12000 to the 17000 range. Which would be pretty decent on a Standard Monarch map.

CB
 
17K score is "pretty decent"???

Awesome is more like it.

I'm at the milking stage, victory in the bag, but don't have a prayer of putting up a score like that.

I'll write it up once the fat lady sings.
 
I have to agree, 17K is truly awesome. I thought I was doing pretty good up until that post. I am not sure what kind of score I will have though. There are still too many turns for me to estimate.
 
After the French onslaught of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries I began rebuilding. Started with the forbidden palace in the big Russian city that had just flipped to me. That's the area I had originally wanted for the FP anyway. So I spend a hundred years rebuilding and climbing the tech tree in a catch up race. Still no coal. China wipes out India. (I never even got to see India on the map!) Russia, France, Japan and England have several war amongst themselves which I ignored. One of my cites flips back from the French. I build Wall St., a couple armies, factories, I have one rubber, make infantry, build the pentagon and finish my second forbidden palace. Still no coal. Built an explorer and scope out France and Russia. Hmmm... Russia has many cities with English names and their borders are not locked. Here's a river with coal on one bank and silk on the other! I made some settlers to fill these gaps and get that coal! I've got one oil and I start my first panzer. Working on a hospital or two, the intelligence agency and infantry. I want 2 in every city and 3 or 4 armies of 'em to go with all those Panzers I'm gonna build. First I'm going to take back my cities from the French. Then I'll take a chunk of Russia. (hehe)
WHAT! Russia declares war on us! No!
Yes, the glorious Germans were blitzed by Russian tanks on the very eve of the Fatherland's drive for dominence. Lost all the big Russian cities I had in one fell swoop - including my SECOND forbidden palace. Catherine showed no mercy as her bombers took out my only oil field. Leftover cossacks even cut off my saltpeter supply and to rub it in moved on my iron. Left with the ability to make riflemen and knights I could only watch in horror as the Russians razed my precious cities.
This gotm was almost as bad as when we played China!
I had such high hopes for this one and never even got the first panzer built. No golden age either.:( I when I remember that I stood outside Moscow with 9 units in the ancient era and gave them peace when they asked for it...:mad: Something in the back of mind said I 'd regret that someday...:cry:
 
Donsig,

Always kill Cathy. Never kiss Cathy. Cathy is a snake.

Trade with Cathy only to gain enough time and advantage to kill Cathy. Chop Cathy to little bits and cast her ashes to the wind. Cathy is the reincarnation of Soren's prom date who spit in his punch bowl and the left dance early with another guy after picking Soren's pocket to steal his wallet and car keys to make sure she had his cash, credit cards, three condoms, transportation, and even his library card and Chuckie Cheese tokens. Every moment Cathy lives is potentially a risk to your survival. Even as a science research partner, Cathy sucks because she will do stupid things like turn off all research in her empire to save up cash so her spies can try and steal techs from you instead.

Usually the luxury trade rate is the last straw for Cathy in my games even if I let her live that long. Since I can't trade her spices, ivory, incense, furs, plus 30 gpt to get just one of the three extra gems she has, then she is obviously suffering from siphilis induced insanity and must be dispatched.

Kill Cathy and everyone who has ever spoken to her.
 
I had been thinking about trying to survive until 2050 so that I could get at least the 3000+ that I was on track to get.
But I was building my spaceship and I had never won by spaceship before. I didn't know that I had no choice but to launch once I finished it. :crazyeye:
Anyway. I finished my Spaceship in 1953 with China only needing to complete 3 pieces in order to launch.
So...I posted a victory this time.
 
Congrats Pelman.

Ainwood,

Your score for Cathy has one too many digits ;) but it gives me great pleasure to know your Otto smacked your Cathy early on as well.

Remember that this is the average score of all of Cathy's per turn scores so the more turns you have with Cathy getting a per turns score of zero, the lower her score will be.

Its sort of silly that 4000 or 5000 years after Cathy gets whacked then she still has a score hanging around. It ought to cost you at least 1 point per turn to have your name listed on the histograph. That way the scum would eventually fade away and vanish.;)

This points for all eternity thing is part of the reason, that allowing the AI players to respawn was such a numb nuts idea. Cathy used to get the chance to start over 3 or 4 times with 4x as many military units plus she got to keep her culture and keep her points. Kill Cathy.
 
I left Cathy live, I use her as unit trainer and punching bag. She's even the biggest of the 3 vassals, with 11 cities. Compared with Liz (4) and Joan (6) she's huge. Don't think that she can cause me any harm though, she's far behind and pitiful poor.
 
Why you guys have such a negative attitude on Cathy?:D

I find her a good neighbor in most of the game, although not so helpful.

If I have had a look at the thread and saw that SirPleb the great also want to add a space ship to his trophy list I would never choose this way!:cry:

Well, I have never saw this much land in any civ games. So I totally forgot I could go early war and destruct the French and Russians. I just expand w/o spearman. Got caught by barbarian uprisings several times, lost, er, about 100-200 gold, maybe a good lesson to me.

In middle ages I began to research myself. Joan was generous enough to give me 100 gold per turn for any of my techs, so my cash flow always turns good. Joan was also in a good shape with my advanced techs so she went war with Lisa and soon crushed her. Then she started to battle with Cathy. Meanwhile I got Panzers and would like to start a GA to get Computers and some other Modern techs faster. So I used 12 Panzers to join Joan in the war. In 6 turns Cathy lost most of her cities(to me, of course :D)and I sued peace for yet another city.

Never turned to Democracy because I never had the time to do the research and when Joan discovered it, it was late-industrial and I was already in my very-late GA.

Got ship launched quite early. Actually it is my earliest SS victory. Still wonders how many centuries SirPleb would be ahead of me.
 
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