GOTM100 - Final Spoiler

[civ_steve]

GOTM 100 Final Spoiler - Game Submitted

Reading Requirements:
You may only read this thread if:

1. You have completed and submitted your game.

Posting Restrictions:

1. None! (for THIS contest) As long as its related to the GOTM, and within the forum rules!

[*]Absolutely NO Discussion of any other active 'X'OTM contest!

Your submittal for the 100th GOTM is in! Congratulations! How did it finish, and what happened along the way? Any and all final comments are welcome.

 

[templar_x]

if nothing else, i´ll be the first to submit for this special XOTM! it was a blast! here we go...

special Predator ConDom Competition
ConDom victory in 460ad
Firaxis score 10888
Jason score 11138

continuing from spoiler # 1:

775 enter Republic
gift Persia up, they get Feud
750 kick off GA (i think long and hard and feel absolutely not sure about this), go full speed for Eng
670 meet Greece where i expected them, they are very backward, gift them up and get Eng from them; trade that for Feud and Mono
550 declare on staff, busting my rep: take the capital (barely) + 2 more towns + raze 1. gain a 3rd lux.
310 aaaaaaaaaaahhh!!! the nemesis!!! there´s a 1-tile island! need to go and settle that... i feel traumatized about that.
190 take Paris with the Pyramids
170bc my 16th e victory spawns PIU FREDDO! run to rush the FP
130 rush FP in the former heart of the staff´s lands, connect 4th lux
110 FP built, finally connect horses!
70bc French destroyed, 5th lux connected
30 staff taken out – sorry folks, it was nothing personal, for sure!
10ad after forever the AI managed to research GP... would have preferred them to go for Chiv or Theo
30ad ok, someone obviously went for Theo. hm, Persia declares on the last turn of a linked deal, that i did NOT intend to renew, after i bought an expensive ROP MT in.
50ad upgrade my first cavs. will play disconnect-connect this time. switch off research, > +600 gpt allows 6 upgrades per turn, 12 if i can get my hands on Leo´s
70ad says hi to my 2nd MGL with my 21st e victory, Lanzelot! wanna rush Leo´s with it.
90ad take Mongolian capital with first cav attack. rush Leo´s. see first Polynesian vessel, but just a canoe.
190 Mongols gone
210 Modern Elites destroyed... this is like "Majestätsbeleidigung"
230 settle 1-tile island :uffh:
250 Arabs gone
Persia is able to muster many more Immortals than i would have imagined. i even see a 9/9 Immortal army defending a town!
280 war against Egypt starts
290 get my 3rd MGL with my 43rd elite victory, rushes Sun Tzu´s. takes me a minute to realize that the MGL has MY NAME! extra-cool . kill the army. get another MGL, this time it´s Neo666. Rush Sistine´s for very little use.
300 take Madrid with Col and TGLight. 5th MGL “Megalou” with 48th e victory. nothing useful left to rush, so i rush a temple. (sorry my friend if you fell this is under your value.)
take 2 Greek towns, losing 4 cavs to hoplites :argh:
310 Romans destroyed
320 6th MGL with 56th e victory “Piu Freddo”. 7th MGL “Lanzelot” with 60th e victory. take Thebes with THG. 7 luxes connected, furs probably quite out of reach.
330 8th MGL “templar_x” with 65th e victory. continent connected west-east. Persia destroyed.
340 Spanish destroyed. invade Polynesia. continent connected north-south. reach +800gpt.
350 Polynesia destroyed. they had no role in this game. 9th MGL “Neo666” with 73rd e victory.
360 last visible Egypt town taken, perhaps settler on boat.
370 invasion of Ancient Elites´ lands.
380 no unit cost any more. practically stop building units, disband some for culture and settlers.
390 new Egyptian capital founded
400 10th MGL “Megalou”
420 Babs destroyed, Egypt destroyed
440 Greece destroyed
450 kill Ancient elites, conquest and domination victory! (even reached with the same MOVE not just the same turn)
i end the turn after settling +136 tiles over the dom limit, about 200 including the expansions.

later MGLs rushed culture buildings for expansion. the timing of the ConDom victory went quite ok for my feeling. i´ll see what it´s worth when the others´ submittals are in.

templar_x

 

[Sima Qian]

Congrats to templar_x for checking in with the first ConDom (uhh... Freudian slip?) victory. Quite an impressive feat, no doubt.

This GOTM was too interesting for me to pass up. I found a convenient location for my city 1 tile west of the wines. I made sure to maintain a very good relationship with the GOTM staff throughout the game and was free to provoke basically everyone else to dump small numbers of relatively weak units in my territory for me to kill (leader-farming, of course).

3850 BC - Palace
2750 BC - Temple
1830 BC - Colossus
530 BC - Great Library
130 BC - Hanging Gardens (GA begins)
230 AD - Sistine Chapel
410 AD - Copernicus's Observatory
430 AD - Library
460 AD - University
480 AD - Cathedral
500 AD - Colosseum
900 AD - Smith's Trading Company (thanks to Piu Freddo, MGL vs France)
1110 AD - Shakespeare's Theater
1270 AD - Newton's University
1325 AD - Universal Suffrage (thanks to Lanzelot, MGL vs Greece)
1540 AD - Theory of Evolution
1615 AD - Hoover Dam
1640 AD - Intelligence Agency
1782 AD - United Nations
1800 AD - SETI Program (thanks to templar_x, MGL vs Greece)
1802 AD - Research Lab

The Mongols, French, and Spanish got eliminated, and while Polynesia got kicked off their home island, they managed to hang on with a single city surrounded by the Ancient Elites (with whom they seemed to get along pretty well). Modern Elites never got very far, surrounded by enemies; the moral of the story is that n00bs like myself really can't hold a candle to legendary players like SirPleb, Moonsinger, et al.

Resources were a serious pain this time. The GOTM Staff conveniently took down the Greek colonies west of my city and let me grab the iron there, but I had to wait an absurdly long time before Ancient Elites finally had some spare coal to trade. I was never able to get oil during this game -- would have loved to send a battleship or aircraft carrier around to harass the AI.

At the very end of the game I decided to have some fun and raze a few cities that Persia took from the Arabs. In the process I managed to free up a spare uranium that Abu had lost, so I gifted Fission to him and started building the Manhattan Project. Too bad I couldn't complete it before the culture limit was reached.

It felt a bit tougher to play on a large map. The turns were longer and I wasn't able to finish in under 10 hours, although this curiously-crafted scenario was well worth the time spent. Thanks GOTM Staff for an enjoyable game.

Entry class: Predator
Game status: Cultural 20K Victory for Human Players
Game date: 1836 AD
Firaxis score: 1402
Jason score: 2687
Time played: 10:19:46

[warning: large screenshot]

Spoiler :

 

[templar_x]

i´m a true fan of your XOTM OCCs, Sima Qian! very nice to read your spoiler, as always.

if anyone is interested, i had some more afterthoughts about the game, and pictures.

+ the first wars against the staff and the Arabs went as planned. the second series of wars against France and Persia... not so. i could not maintain the ROPs with them after my first ROP rape (ever!). with Persia, it was purely bad luck with a linked deal. but with France, i am convinced i should have done something different about the ROP deals. I´ll ask my friend Megalou, allegedly the unbeaten champion of dastardly action.
i think i lost at least 5 turns in each of these wars compared to the planned progress. it´s hard to say if thos 5 turns stayed effective until the game ended, but i am pretty sure that i could have gotten to the Ancient Elites earlier with faster progress through Persian lands.

+ techs: i found Cavs very helpful and did not bother to ever build knights. horses were connected only so late that Chivalry didn´t appear to make sense to me.
i believe that cavs even made the game faster, given the large map and some good defenders. i already lost quite a few cavs to pikes and hoplites, how many more knights would have perished? would be interesting to see if someone went with knights.

+ ConDom finish: the Freudian slip might be there, Sima, as my lady and i started "work" on our first child however, see the discussion we already had in the pre-game thread.
i managed to reach conquest and domination without delaying one for the other. sure some preparations had to be made, and i could not be sure for a turn or two if both was reached by the same time. but it worked out.
what i did was rush culture at certain places, settlers at others, until about 5 turns before my intended victory. then only settlers. in case conquest could be achieved faster, i moved quite a few settlers around that could settle anytime. i could have delayed their settlement (easier than the cultural expansions, of course), but this did not prove necessary. i even had many more available than i actually would have needed (better safe than sorry, i though).
after i had TGLight i brought two shiploads of units to the Ancient Elites´ lands from our peninsula, most of the units were transferred over from Persia though (taking Polynesia on their way, within only 1 turn).

+ FP: i was not really sure where to build my 2nd core. France looked easier to set up, but the staff´s land was already completely conquered when i got my first MGL. i relied on an MGL, with all the fighting i expected. i decided to got with the staff´s core, although it required some improvement, because it promised more gold which i needed for the upgrades and culture rushes. plus more towns would benefit from the FP, and quite a few towns became able to build 2- and 3-turn horses. i added lots of workers and even slaves to the towns to grow even faster.

+ donsig: nice, but not upgradable, so i built only a few and mainly swords for the first wars, and upgraded them to MIs soon. there were not many occasions when i needed that strong defense, and when i did the RNG still let them die quite easily.

pictures:

killing the last civ

turn of ConDom in 450ad (preturn) with CA

victory message

a capitol with less than 9 tiles!

a great game to play!

templar_x

 

[Megalou]

Predator ConDom Challenge
ConDom victory in 630 AD
Tiles to limit: -542

Congratulations to to T_x for being in the lead so far. Perhaps it will be like Julia Mancuso in the Olympics, who earned two medals with the starting number 1. (In your case it would be one medal and one award.)

It is probably impossible to pinpoint the decisive differences between the ConDom entries #1 and #2. But it seems clear that you played more carefully in the beginning. I had barb problems but more importantly I only set up one settler factory. My timing towards the end cannot have been that good, because I had the rather nearby Greeks left as the last civ for 4 turns, but that cannot have accounted for as much as 17 turns.

Still, I'm happy with some parts of the game. I got rid of Polynesia (including zillions of raiders) in only one turn of war, using a bleak core town that I had gotten in a peace treaty. (See screenies.) By the way, the second biggest Polynesian island had 2 towns with no defenders at all. It is strange that the Polynesians should build so many raiders on their home island, stifle their economy, and not expand beyond their starting archipelago. They were best suited to expand by sea but only built one town on the mainland, near Ancient Elites territory.

Perhaps I also had the largest number of settlers (69) before the last turn, because I went through the ordeal of disbanding cavalries and galleys for free settlers in many towns. But I did not go for a 100% domination. Nor did I have the energy to keep notes, because this game was too tough and time consuming, with about 300 units to move around at the end. Thanks again for this exciting game!

 

[templar_x]

hi Megalou

although coming from an alpine skiing nation, i had no clue who Julia Mancuso was. i never watch those races. so i looked her up on the internet.
she´s a good looking girl, i could neither compete with regard to her sports abilities nor to her appearance.

the number of settlers you built is stunning! did you have so much population in the conquered lands?

maybe you could add your score as well.

now you mentioned it two more details about the game came into my memory. first, my Polynesians did not build zillions of units on their island. possibly i encountered fewer because i kept them involved in wars for a long time. i preferred them pestering the AIs rather than me, plus i had the hope that they´ll use up some of their navy so that i could invade them without too high losses. when D-day came, i did not see any ships at all...
second, the Ancients showed a weird behaviour. not only did they never connect salt, although it was right there, but when i landed my first units they had LONGBOWS as defenders in their cities. hehh??? sure they immediately started rushing pikes, but at first most towns had a lb on top at first view.

templar_x

 

[Megalou]

Yes, the ancients were incredibly weak for the Emperor level. They mostly had longbowmen as defenders, as you say. The toughest defender in my game wasn't even a pikeman but a fast swordsman. Regarding settlers I could have hurried many more, had I deployed the military units better before disbanding. I was careful to quell resistance, irrigate and join workers but I wish I had put more of my energy into the early phases of the game instead. My score was in the 10Ks.

 

[Megalou]

I just read Sima Qian's excellent spoiler more carefully and I was surprised you didn't get more leaders, because I got a zillion leaders. For example, I got at least four Piú Freddos, maybe five, and 3-4 Megalous. I was almost convinced that the leader odds had been tweaked. In the end I had so little use for leaders that I hurried a marketplace to get some more happiness. I also hurried Sun Tzu's, Leo's Workshop, Bach's Cathedral, Pentagon, Sistine Chapel (mainly intended to demoralize the AIs that were building it ,) two colosseums, a number of late libraries for culture, and made about 6-7 armies.

I didn't save leaders for very long, eg for the useful Bach's Cathedral, so that may be a reason why I got so many. But the odds for getting so many must have been really small unless the game actually was tweaked.

 

[Sima Qian]

@Megalou: It's kind of tough to get tons of leaders when I only build a couple dozen ground troops throughout the entire game (CivAssist says I ended the game with 88 units, of which 34 are slave workers, 30 are artillery, and 3 are boats). Though yes, I also felt that I still got more than my share based on what little I had to work with.

 

[painterQ]

Is there some hidden place for a full word/translation of what words shortenings meen?
like
ROP :
GA (Golden age)
MT:
MGL:
and so on

think I wont post my first GOTM after watching how early you finished :s
and you seem to be using some wierd addon program Ive never heard off before

had ca 16 cities at 1000bc.. but after that you left me for dead

 

[Megalou]

Well, there are some special tricks, and perhaps a certain aggressive attitude: when the AI are ripe they are reaped. The military advisor is not a bad help, but when he says "Compared to the Persians, we have an average military" it means that we have a way better military, because we don't build tons of spermen but only offensive units, don't we?

ROP-Right of Passage agreement
ROP rape- Positioning your troops in favorable positions with the help of a ROPbefore declaring war
MT-The Military Tradition tech.
MGL-Miitary Great Leader.
AA,MA,IA-Ancient, Medieval, Industrial Ages. The risk of confusion between the medieval and modern age is obvious, but the context decides which one is referred to.
FP - Forbidden palace...

 

[painterQ]

jees... Ive played civ sins 94' and never known you could stack your units inside enemy land, and attack from there..
maybe Ive played civ2 to much, cause in my mind, your units will be kicked out of that nations land, if you declare war whilst inside their land.
could I get that guy templar to say whit what units he started attacking, (swords+ uu? or medieval+ uu)
and why he selected republic instead of monarchy or democracy?

 

[templar_x]

if one asks so politely, the "templar guy" cannot resist to answer... but don´t come next time and ask for danegeld if you do not happen to be Knut the Great.

my first attack was with swords that were soon upgraded to MIs. i built only a couple of donsigs.

rep or mon was a rather close call in that game. usually i always play as a republic, even if i have to war a lot. wars are pretty much one sided up to demigod, so that i am on the giving end of the club, so war weariness usually does not become a real problem. in this game, i do not think that the government choice had a high impact on the finish date. i could be proven wrong though by the many strong players who still did not submit/post. (which government did you choose, Megalou?)

i could hardly think of any situation where democracy could be useful. maybe a 5cc with a rel civ. the tech comes much too late for the first government change, and a second won´t pay off.

templar_x

 

[Megalou]

(which government did you choose, Megalou?)

(I chose republic because of the extra commerce. I chose the extra commerce because I needed to research all the way to MT. Republic is superior unless you are really caged in and can't expand. Here, we could easily cut through the GOTM_Staff marmalade (pardon) using swordsmen and military infantry as you said and claim a lot of territory. So the commerce situation would improve all the time. Personally, I also think it is a relief not to bother about using military police for happiness. I get enough of that in despotism. It is much more comfortable to adjust the luxury slider.)

 

[painterQ]

well I tried to compare monarchy republic and democracy, and so no big difference
once I had arabs+ staff+ france lands... maybe I compared to early, cause I normally always use republic also :/(and democracy in huge maps with most AI players)
I dident though start war with swords this time, but with uu + mace swingers.
went full tax at mapmaping and bought rest of science.. normally i go full tax once i have cavalry.. but it felt impossible to gain that damn horse square at XXXXXXX.
I never used the option to ROP.
once i had france.. and had 1 army(25 units) at persia, and 1 at the former mongols(35 units)(mongols and elites(germany) were gone/enialated, by spain+egypts+persia.
and this was 880 ad :/ had all 2nd bracket teck except the one to cavalry.. so had to start it myself with 9 turns to make it.
then looked at templar_x ending.. and though beh.. WTH.. Im slow? well damn.
and quit game ca 55 hr played.
I had 2 army men that i saved for cavalry so dieent use.. a 3rd i rused FP at painters slaves(former paris)

 

[templar_x]

painterQ - you are aware that you shouldn´t read the spoiler infos (and thus see my/anyone´s finish dates) before you submitted yourself, right?

templar_x

 

[painterQ]

well my entry was dirtied up alreaddy sins I first started the game in conquest mode (yes I am a WERY laicy reader, dident even noticed I pushed a button named PLAYTHE WORLD to dl)
so it was achually my 2nd go at this game
can say my 1st game went better cause i managed to get horses from greece for about 15 turns and bought enough cavalries and take fast go trough staff cities, and sail over to take the 2-3 cities near the horse resource at XXXXX.
was my first attempt at gotm, so I guess its "okay"
<- failed not once but twice but was a fun game start nevertheless
"facepalm needed"

 

[civ_steve]

Hi painterQ! Welcome to CFC and the GOTM!

I have checked and you have not submitted a final save file for GOTM100. Typically folks who are playing to submit a final file for GOTM will download the save file they wish to play, play through to conclusion without replaying any of the turns, select the "play a few more turns" option at the end (if they won, or save on the turn before a conquest loss), save and submit that save file. Participation in the spoiler threads is reserved to players who have reached the required game milestone for each thread - end of the Ancient Age, end of the Middle Ages or game submitted. Players can also submit an unfinished game if they wish. We do this so that players can play their first attempt at a game without having information that they shouldn't have, which makes the comparison between games fair and the results meaningful.

Your postings in the Spoilers are fine since you haven't submitted. And if you finished your first game completely before downloading and playing any of the second, it may be acceptable to submit the save from the first, if you wish. I appreciate your questions, and many players here will be happy to answer them, discuss strategy, and in general help improve the overall level of play.

I almost always play in Republic; that extra commerce is pratically a requirement for fast research to get to the techs you need. And the program I believe you're referring to is CivAssistII - the thread for it and I believe the link to download it is HERE.

 

[Più Freddo]

Sorry guys, no time to finish this epic game. I forecast a ConDom between 600 and 700. Retired in 490. No match for templar_x.

 

[painterQ]

The 1st go that I played in conquest mode I won via domination in the year 1770Ad (maybe plus10 years)
<- trying 2 make that add on work, it keeps crashing for me here at the netcafe
Maybe itll work better at home.
My personal nemesis is stop using reload