GOTM 89 - Final Spoiler

neilmeister · Apr 6, 2013

GOTM 89 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 win?
Was it peaceful?

Sleepless · Apr 7, 2013

Mmm Did I win? Yes

Was it peaceful.. Mmm No

After my poor attempt at worker stealing and being limited to 5 cities I relied on cats to get me out of the mess I was in. Luckily being a small map the AI didn't have many more cities than me. Think I built 78 cats in the end. I killed off Fred in 3 separate wars. Peter and Liz in one and was on the way through Roo when I tripped the domination limit. Handy as he had Grens at the end where as my best units were knights (and lots of cats).

So dom victory in 1470. Going to be hard for conquest in this map with no city razing.

Thanks for the game. :goodjob:

undead · Apr 7, 2013

I eliminated Peter without too much trouble.

Spoiler :

But then, I didn't know what to do with those captured cities, without many cottages and with borders problems. I went for the initially planned cultural victory, with 7 religions. Each cathedral required only 2 temples (small map). I couldn't decide which city to cottage. I lost a lot of time researching nationalism in bureaucracy mode (and building the hermitage in the capital, useless), while Frederick in free speech mode was gaining territory instead of the usually opposite situation. In the end the capital was "very" legendary, followed by 3 (not 2) mediocre candidates. Then Frederick, probably tired to wait for me, won a space victory.

Spoiler :

So, was it peaceful? Well, after the war against Peter, things went so peacefully that I deleted most of my military units (never did that before). Probably impressed by my longbowmen, Frederick asked for a defensive pact, which I signed, not that I needed one. So in the end, yes, it was particularly peaceful. :lol:

undead · Apr 8, 2013

Restarting from 1400AD (end of the first session), on the second try, I could win culturally by slicing the powerful capital with the GP farm quickly converted into a cottage city, Moscow being the other legendary city, after as much cottaging as possible.

But the diplomatic victory was much easier to reach, by switching to free religion, beelining to mass media and getting democracy and biology. I had no diplomacy penalty and everybody was friendly with me. The first vote worked. I don't know how random diplomatic victory is with so many pleased/friendly people though.

In all the above scenarios I deleted the military stack ASAP to reduce maintenance.

craigholl · Apr 14, 2013

I don't know how you guys do it at this level. (And I was playing at Emperor; my usual level is Prince) I got Buddhism and Hinduism and then Stonehenge, along with two settlers and two workers. I was going to build an army for war against Frederick since I was trapped by him. I had made a handful of units when he declared war on me. I was able to quickly capture a city of his to the SE of my capital. I came close to capturing a second city when his production power overtook mine. Battled to 250 AD, at which point he had re-captured his city and then took one of mine out. Then I retired. I think if I could have gotten that second city I could have defeated him eventually and then been in the catbird's seat against the others.

I did build barracks before starting my army. Is that a mistake? Was Stonehenge a mistake? I was using Axemen, Swords, and Spears in my army; no archery. Any tips for me? I was looking to get to cats but was still 30 turns away when I retired.

neilmeister · Apr 15, 2013

craigholl said:
I don't know how you guys do it at this level. (And I was playing at Emperor; my usual level is Prince) I got Buddhism and Hinduism and then Stonehenge, along with two settlers and two workers. I was going to build an army for war against Frederick since I was trapped by him. I had made a handful of units when he declared war on me. I was able to quickly capture a city of his to the SE of my capital. I came close to capturing a second city when his production power overtook mine. Battled to 250 AD, at which point he had re-captured his city and then took one of mine out. Then I retired. I think if I could have gotten that second city I could have defeated him eventually and then been in the catbird's seat against the others.

I did build barracks before starting my army. Is that a mistake? Was Stonehenge a mistake? I was using Axemen, Swords, and Spears in my army; no archery. Any tips for me? I was looking to get to cats but was still 30 turns away when I retired.

Your first mistake was getting Hinduism & Buddhism.
Getting just one is normally a big mistake on higher levels, you really need to focus on worker techs in the beginning.

Stonehenge can be nice, and Gandhi is industrious (in Vanilla), so so it isn't an error in itself.

AT the high levels, you need to focus on what you need, and make sure everything you do is essential.

The basics are:
- build a worker first, nearly always.
- research techs to allow your worker to develop the food tiles (agriculture and maybe animal husbandry) and hammer tiles (mining) and The Wheel so you can road.
- always develop food first.
- don't build a road unless you need to.
- after the first worker, grow to either 2 or 3 before starting settler.
- settle the first city close by and near food

FiveRings · Apr 16, 2013

Domination victory in 1924. I'd have said that it was average for me - although my first Immortal win - I tried the SH and got money, I lost the competition for land to Fred and had to make go with only 5 cities (one Barb city taken), traded for Philo and later researched MilTrad which I didn't need, didn't use the window of opportunity to attack Fred with cats (did it later with guns) .. but when I look at Sleepless' accomplishment, I have to say: it was average in being sloppy. First victory on Imm, though, as I said. Of course, seems much easier against 4 AIs. BTW, killed Fred first, then Peter whom I have kept on pleased most of the time, then Roose - to make the percentage. Didn't attack Liz, 'cause I needed less than 0.5% land and one of Phila, Boston and Ana just had to return to life to win. Liz was better in research till the end.
Thanks for the game, it was fun!

Solyaris · Apr 17, 2013

Domination in 1180 AD. Had minus GPT at 0% every single turn after 1AD, surviving by conquest money. Never got alphabet, CS, or metal casting, so you can safely say I was far, far behind on tech.

Built:
27 axe
35 war elephant
79 catapult

craigholl · Apr 17, 2013

Thanks neilmeister for the tips. The one about always building a worker first will be put to good use. Hopefully that'll help me on these higher levels since it always seems like I've lost as soon as I started.

On Noble and Prince my typical route is to get one religion, build 2-3 cities, then take out any and all neighbors on the island with whatever military techs I have. Then build out the island and develop until I have factories, marines, and artillery. Then I take over the world. But clearly that doesn't work at higher levels.

PattonTwo · Apr 20, 2013

This was my most successful GOTM so it was good fun. End result was a domination victory in 1695.

I settled the first city on the plains hill SE and was fairly happy with that choice. My second city went near the marble (SE of it) to the SW of the capital and my third city was settled in 2120 went NW next to the copper. I didn't get my 4th city settled until 600 BC and at 1 AD I had only the 4 cities and was dead last in score with 642 which was less than half Peter's score. I still need to figure out how to get into an earlier war.

My first war was against Bismark and was started in 125 AD with 5 War Elephants, 6 axemen and 7 catapults. The was was successful, but it did take me until 940 when I gave Germany peace for machinery. They had only 1 city at that point and it was going to take close to 10 turns to position my forces.

By 1450 I was ready to attack Peter. The best idea I had in this game was to first get Peter into a war so I bribed him to attack England in 1210. I waited until 1450 when Peter took the 2nd English city (London) and then I started the attack from his eastern front. Shortly after I bribed the US to join the war and in 1520 it was the three of us united in an attack against Peter who was killed off around 1675.

I was able to stay current and/or slightly ahead in tech almost the entire game and built TGL, Oxford plus the Taj Mahol and Chichen Itza in the capital. I missed out on several wonders, starting with the pyramids but the cash helped out as well.

I finished with a 66000 score which is my highest Emperor score ever and my 2nd highest score on any level.

Thanks for the fun game!

Solyaris · Apr 20, 2013

Well done PattonTwo!

neilmeister · Apr 20, 2013

Congratulations PattonTwo, you are definitely improving and moving up the leaderboard.

Early wars at high levels are fraught with danger, if they come off they can be great but if not they usually mean disaster.

evil_spock · Apr 23, 2013

475 AD Domination

-Settled in place. 2nd city next to corn and ocean fish. 3rd next to copper and shared flood plains. No room for others since Fred's border was spreading fast. Not that I would have built another settler anyway. 3 cities is enough for early catapult warfare.

-Stole a worker from Fred.

-Oracled construction and spammed catapults and when you add elephants to that, it's an easy victory.

-After construction, teched alphabet for peace treaty techs. Got the great lighthouse from Peter which helped with the economy.

-Quite slow AIs: got Hinduism fairly late, not that it ever spread anywhere or was that useful. Only Roose managed to get longbows and that was when he had 2 cities left.

-This game reminded once again that fast workers are AWESOME!

Jastrow · Apr 29, 2013

Space in 1850... That seems rather slow, especially for Gandi and a decent map layout, but it felt pretty efficient as it was happening... I guess the small map really slows down global tech pace, so maybe it is OK.

I took out the Germans and Peter to get just over half the map, and then just went peaceful the rest of the way. Liz an Roosevelt were non-issues the entire game.

keiselhorn13 · Apr 30, 2013

Incomplete 275ad submission from me. No fault of my own this time though. The game actually bugged, resulting the city screen for Delhi (only) to lose some of its info features, particularly the top with city name, hammers, food info etc. ; and also the right-hand side with the great people sliders. I considered taking the issue to the mods to see if could be fixed, but I've been short of time and haven't played this one very well so just decided to start the Mansa WOTM.

Jastrow said:
I guess the small map really slows down global tech pace, so maybe it is OK.

Seems to me AIs with few cities can't research fast at all even in harder levels. I recall the vanilla Toku GOTM a few months ago (epic small pangea), I think Immortal dif, which surprised me with the slow tech pace, even with many AIs that could trade a lot between themselves. No civ had more than 6 or 7 cities IIRC.

Jastrow · Apr 30, 2013

Yeah, not only can they not research fast, the have no gold to trae for your spare resources, an indeed, they cannot even provide a decent amount to trade routes. In this game, I actually spent most of my time in Mercantilism, because the free specialist was worth more than the available foreign trade.

zamint3 · May 2, 2013

1010AD Domination 252k

Being behind in tech is no big deal when you have enough Vanilla cats...

I built 61 cats, 40 HA, 16 WE and 12 axes

At the end I was running a deficit of -254 gpt at 0% science :mischief:

Jastrow · May 2, 2013

BTW... I capture an unusually large number of cities with no buildings at all in them... Was this just RNG base, or is it reletated to the no city razing option being selected?

Falabello · May 3, 2013

I stayed out of XOTMs for a while

, but tried this one and finally I got to send it (in the last day of submission :whew:

).

But hey, here it is :rockon:

! My first victory in XOTMs at Immortal :banana:

(I had already attained it in the HOF Tables, but here is different and much more difficult we have play according to certain circumstances we are not used)

Despite the victory, I still have much to learn :confused:

. I started the war against Fred around 200 BC with Cats and Axes and took all the land cities, left only one two tiles island. After that I had to recover my economy (this topic is still a difficulty in my games :blush:

). So I took more three cities from Peter (including Moscow) and with the help from another side (the western forces) Peter was dead. Fred with his little island was disturbing me, so he had to disappear. So, the East Side of Pangaea was mine :nya:

. Thereafter I returned to recover the economy again. In this stage of the game I dont know what decisions to make :dunno:

. My intention was Domination, but I didnt know if I would have gold and time sufficient to prepare a new and strongest army. In this time I was teching to new possibilities and first in Score, (and I was thinking in Cannons to upgrade my Cats), but the Other Side was strengthened. So I decided not to risk and try another strategy. I arrived late to Space Race, and then I try the Mess Media. With the votes from England, a got a Diplo Win with a late date.

But hey, who cares about it

? This Immortal victory means (specially to me) a new beginning to play :eekdance:

. In the HOF Tables I reached the Deity, but here is another challenge I still have several difficulties in the XOTMs, even in the lowest levels :huh:

. So, Im very glad with this result :w00t:

and had some fun with this game. COOL

!!!

neilmeister · May 4, 2013

Well done Falabello!

I loved reading about how you kept adapting to the game, changing your victory target. That is how a great player wins.

GOTM 89 - Final Spoiler

Lentils have feelings too