GOTM #9 *Spoilers* Thread

[Phillip_martin]

Cracker and Cartouche Bee,

Am I correct in assuming that both your wars against the Japanese involved Horses/Swordsman against Archer/Spearman?

This would have been based on the learning that they did not have iron/horses early on.

I missed that to start with hence I am racing to get a Knight army together before rifleman appear.

Japan appears to be the biggest threat in most of the GOTMs.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Originally posted by Phillip_martin
Cracker and Cartouche Bee,

Am I correct in assuming that both your wars against the Japanese involved Horses/Swordsman against Archer/Spearman?

This would have been based on the learning that they did not have iron/horses early on.

I missed that to start with hence I am racing to get a Knight army together before rifleman appear.

Japan appears to be the biggest threat in most of the GOTMs.

I don't think I attacked as early as cracker. I started the war with chariots/swordsmen but used knights the last half of the war. Japan seems to always pour on the culture and I wanted to get by them before the samurai.

 

[cracker]

Phillip,

I should probably be on the record as feeling that you should not be here reading the spoiler's thread because you are way too early in the Game. Just my opinion based on your questioning type posts about still not having built knights and still dealing with Japan.

Not a flame, just a thought out loud.

On the Japan question, my thoughts were driven by knowing Japan gets he evil samuri instead of knights. Also with our realtively limited value start position, that meant I felt that I needed to restrict the development of my nearest neighbor or I was going to die.

Egypts War Chariots are open terrain horsemen at only 2/3 the cost of horsemen. Compared to Japan if building horsemen at 24 shields per horse I would have an advantage with my 20 shield War Chariot. I don't think I ever built even one archer or real longbowman in the whole game

When I met Japan, I had only the tech prereqs for MapMaking and Temples so I did not have a clue what their military looked like. I didn't even get them to trade me their map because the Shogun refused to trade me his territory map for anything less than two or three techs. So all I knew was the coastal towns and the location of Kyoto due to my embassy. I could look at the garrison of Kyoto and the production queue and see that Kyoto was building the Pyramids with about a 1000 years to go when I first met them (Jerkses beat them to it).

You can also use the "investigate city" menu list from your embassy to get some good data even without investigating a city. I have an excel macro spreadsheet the helps to use the population number for the city plus the investigate city dollar cost to figure a rough guess at what the city contains even without spending a dime.

In my case, I had squeezed 4 cities onto the northern peninsula of Japan and had reached down to grab irrigation from a river when Tokugawa decided to attack me with archers.

I had landed my first units on the north tip of the Japan continent somewhere around 450 BC because the forest were a welcome sight compared the Jungles and riverless plains of the other first two options.

One thing I forget to consider (and it really slowed me down was the river crossing movement penalty that exists until engineering gets discovered much later. Even with my worker hordes throwing down roads it seemed to take forever to get across Japan.

The only brilliant piece of luck (maybe it didn't really matter much) was the choice to send two galleys containing chariots along the north edge of the continent. Originally I was just guessing Kyoto was a coastal city, but this turned out to luck onto one of their horsies in route to the Kyoto Gambit.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Originally posted by cracker


I had landed my first units on the north tip of the Japan continent somewhere around 450 BC because the forest were a welcome sight compared the Jungles and riverless plains of the other first two options.

I founded my first city on that island, 450 BC also.

 

[cracker]

One thing I did a great deal in this game was to use the "Short Rushing" technique to speed up production of units from the moment that I made it into Monarchy.

The technique for "Short Rushing" uses cash to add to an existing shield balance to complete a unit that is just short of the desired completion total and then switch production to the desired unit so that it will complete using the cities expected shield production.

Combined with lots of mid game forestry, you can save lots of shields and lots of gold but this is a very labor and math intensive process in almost every turn.

An example of this technigue that works really well is when a city is producing 10 to 14 shields and you want to build a swordsman.

If you build the swordsman straight in a 14 shield city it will take three turns and cost 42 shields.

If you short rush the swordsman, it can be built in two turns for a cost of 28 shields plus 24 gold.

The trick is to make sure the production bin already has shields in it so the rush cost is 4x the open balance and then set the queue to build a spearman. When the bin has 14 shields in it you pay cash to rush 6 more shields up to the 20 total for the spearman and then switch over to a swordsman with an open balance of 10 shields that will complete in the next turn.

Short rushing works best when you have a production output that is near to a multiple 10.

In some cases, you can disband an obsolete unit to fill part of the production gap. I often use captured catapults for this rush fill technique.

I also applied the same technique in a few cases where I pop rushed to use some unhappy people and convert them to something more useful.

 

[Phillip_martin]

Originally posted by cracker
Phillip,

I should probably be on the record as feeling that you should not be here reading the spoiler's thread because you are way too early in the Game. Just my opinion based on your questioning type posts about still not having built knights and still dealing with Japan.

Not a flame, just a thought out loud.

Fair question. I am currently at 610AD with world maps from everyone after trading for them, so here I am....... As for being relatively equal with the AI's on tech entering the middle ages I thank my lucky archipelagos.

As for questions I hope they don't appear too naive

I am just trying to invoke discussion on how other minds work. For example the key difference between your early expansion and mine was that you collonised the Japanese main island while my settler filled boats saw them and continued on northwards.

I like your thinking about taking on an equally sized horse bases CIV with a cheaper chariot based one. Your toe-hold, cheaper chariots and clever strategies paid off against a CIV without iron.

Nice one.

 

[col]

I tried to colonise northern Japan too. I guessed that a toehold there would prove useful later and ferried across abour ten swordsman to my three cities there with the intention of cutting south. Japan's int must have been pretty good because before I made a move they cut me down with a combined force of about 25 horsies and spearmen.

I also lost four cities including all the spices to culture flips to Japan. Once they got iron and hordes of samurai appeared, there was no chance to make a dent in them before modern warfare.

I went for an 'economic' win. All money and a nice neighbour approach let me get a diplo win. Terrible score - but a more satisfying game than many.

 

[ainwood]

Originally posted by cracker
Phillip,

I should probably be on the record as feeling that you should not be here reading the spoiler's thread because you are way too early in the Game. Just my opinion based on your questioning type posts about still not having built knights and still dealing with Japan.

Again, not flaming, but it does raise the question as to when its acceptable to read this - is it when you know where all other civs are on the map, or when you know where all the landmasses are?

There is another island not shown on your minimap, and two not shown on CBs. If these had resources / luxuries on them, then it would certainly be a "spoiler".

Not that it will affect the games of either of you IMHO (although it is extra land-mass). One of these islands was settled by the Japanese in my game, so it could be the elusive missing Japanese city that someone was commenting about.

 

[cracker]

Ainwood,

Your point about the other island landmasses is semi-valid. I'm not sure the mini-maps do more than just reveal land mass locations as opposed to any resources or luxuries.

I personally stop scouring the map for any final pieces of land once I can add up enough tiles to fit closely with the mapstat totals. I usually kick mapstat on about the time I meet just about everyone on the map. I also find it just infuriating when I sail around the world like Magellan combined with Captain Cook and the AI grins and offers to trade me his World Map that I already know for 100 gold and My World map that is 2 times as grand.

I stopped hunting for land because I was busy enough with the targets I could see. You can just follow right behind and AI boat if you think you smell a blood trail to another potential landmass. Since the AI knows where all the dirt is there is almost no value in scouring the earth for Gilligan's isle.

By using the F11 demographics screen really actively in the early game I could get lots of hints about who was where and how their cities were doing. In one mid game waste of time, I followed an AI galley that was being escorted by a frigate because I assumed they were headed to someplace of value and it turned out just to be a magical mystery tour of sorts.

You can also use the list of cities in the diplomacy screen to compare to the areas of the map you can see and then make a guess as to other land masses. If the AI has 11 cities listed (plus the capital) and you can only see a capital plus 9 more citioes then you can bet your booty they have an island colony or two. A quick foray into the investigate city screen with your embassy will give almost a total picture of an island colony.

One of the problems with Archipeligo maps is that it is almost impossible to kill a civ directly in a single landmass war. The WT Sherman strategy of marching to the sea ends up with the victim escaping to a final refuge on some far off coastline.

 

[cracker]

CB,

I want to ask you if you used the whip much in the early game?

I came to the forums in March but really did not pay much attention until April and really never depot rushed until after the V1.21 patch altered some of the early strengths of that approach.

I have been doing a lot of testing on cases where hurrying along an unit or improvement is still of value during despotism. In this game I rushed a number of units improvements using home grown pop points. I had several really big whip sessions that surged out some key units in many cities all in the space of one or two turns.

I'll probably post a separate discussion on this topic as it relates to religious civs, but would like to here if you felt you could take advantage of the whip prior to about 300BC?

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Hi cracker,

I don't use the whip too much at all (maybe granaries and temples) and not for settlers.

I prefer to let my cities get a bit bigger with granaries to produce settlers. Whipping to produce a granary can rebalance the early loss by faster growth thereafter. Early in the game I use settler production to keep cities from being too unhappy.

Whipping to produce temples can be beneficial when you lack luxuries on higher levels like this but the start position here being a horseshoe type mass did not lend well to leveraging a methodical expansion approach.

When playing for points, whipping needs to be handled carefully, try to use only unhappy population for whipping.

So, to answer your final question, I only used the whip early in the game to finish off the first two granaries I built. I don't recal whipping to complete any temples in this game, I would normally only do that if I was going for an early culture win. I did whip up a galley or two early on.

I'll be interested to hear what you have learned about this form of rush building, I never really tried rush building like that which was used by some in the early versions. Hey, this GOTM was the first time I ever used the boat hopping feature. And your notes on cash rushes reminded me of some things I used to do in Civ2 and should pay attention to in Civ3.

Cheers,

CB

 

[ainwood]

Originally posted by cracker
Ainwood,
Your point about the other island landmasses is semi-valid. I'm not sure the mini-maps do more than just reveal land mass locations as opposed to any resources or luxuries.

No, the minimap does only reveal land-mass locations, but small islands may have resources / luxuries.

I think that this issue is much more applicable to an Archipeligo than to continents.

Maybe people should just refrain from posting the minimaps.

 

[Lawrence]

I am now fighting hard with the barbarians. I have to use Modern Armors to attack their warriors. If I don't attack them, they pillage my roads every turn. So I definitely want some 'auto-clearing barbarians' shortcut now!

 

[Serg]

I met Japan around 800 BC and they had occupied ALL western coast of own island.
I wasn't ready to attack and tryed to capture the maximum other islands.
On the one of that are placed 3 civs (Egypt, America and German) and Aztecs land its troops there.
I'm behind of Cartouche Bee and cracker as regards of Japan's war but I reached some other islands.
I try to attach my minimap at 850AD (I never do it).

 

[cracker]

Serg,

I'd be interested in seeing a power graph for your game circa 800-850AD (at about the same time as the one from CB and from my game. This way we can compare the power impacts of the different strategies. You seemed to be way out in front on the land grab and it would be nice to see how that effected power factors.

I find comparing the nuances and slight differences of these approaches very interesting. Far more interesting than any arguments about fifth or sixth echelon players who might gain access to a remote island via a minimap exploit. Don't take this as a slam, but I had no clue where those last three islands were until late in the game when war refugees revealed their locations to me.

The final outcome of the game is domianted by how quickly you get to the 10th or 12th city on the map because of how the coeffecients in the differential equation are determined over time.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

cracker,

Your power graph starts to really increase when you started your war with Japan. If you look at mine I get a jump at that time also even though I had a more steady increase earlier in the game. Since I build more cities my power goes up quicker but I spend too much production building cities. This usually slows my overall development and military production. This style works best for me when I know I'm going to play all 540 turns. When I do speed runs, I don't build ICS because the expansion goal overrides long term production goals.

CB

 

[philippe]

I am in around 1300 AD now(dont remember it exactly)
I have here a funny pic of the aztecs.
Im doing very good now but i am so behind in tech....:-(
And the whole world is in war with the aztecs

 

[cracker]

Here's a picture that sort of sums up some of my style of play in this game:

 

[Red Wegener]

This is my first GOTM. Its 1330 and I am in 5th place but I expanded well so I have almost as many cities as Japan who is in 1st.

I just traded for Industrializaton and switched to building factories in my core cities.

I am 2 techs behind at this point. Persia beat me to Electricity by 2 turns or I would have caught up on tech. I have science at 9 now and have 4 turns to research medicine.

I am at war for the first time currently with America after signing a MPP with Japan when it was offered so they would attack someone besides me. I made the mistake of signing one with the Aztecs too so I am stuck in the war with America still for a few more turns. Japan signed a peace treaty after Abe took one Japanese city. I have taken one American city and Abe has taken one of mine.

Its been a game of near misses with wonders. I missed The Great Lighthouse by a few turns but got the Great Library. I missed out on Leonardo's Workshop, JS Bach's Cathedral, Smith's Trading Company and Sistine Chapel but got Magellan's Voyage and Newton's University.

My GA was triggered when a war chariot successfully defended against a rifleman attack before I lost the city. Hopefully the GA will allow me to get Universal Suffrage and Theory of Evolution to catch Persia in tech.

I only completed the FP about 5 turns ago on the northern island which I control.

Japan beat me to a temple by a few turns so I lost the saltpeter on the 3rd island that we share. I have a city with saltpeter on the island I share with america but its 72 turns from building a harbor. I am going to have to rush that or I will have to wait for infantry to start offensive actions.

I am still in monarchy. I forgot to switch to republic when I got it and then didn't want to because I was building Smith's Trading Company. I will switch to republic as soon as the war with America ends. No one has researched Democracy yet.

Darn, I was going to include my mini-map but I didn't know I had to upload it to my web space until I just read the instructions. I'll add that later after I install an ftp program.

Thanks for the img instructions, Bamspeedy. Here is my mini-map for 1330.

Red

 

[Serg]

Hi cracker!
I send my score graph for 850AD (Score 2307). The quick growth of it is the begin of Japan's war (end of war ~630AD). I sent the galleys with settlers out as soon as was possible. 12th and 13th cities were founded out of the home island (550BC and 530BC). This fact didn't allow me to get the wide graph in begining because the border wasn't optimal. I met all civs without assistance.
Sorry for show unknown island. I'll no more do it.