GOTM102 - Final Spoiler

[civ_steve]

GOTM 102 Final Spoiler - Game Submitted

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America has a very late UU - did any of them make it into your game?

 

[Megalou]

Ironically, we didn't need Map Making to meet 4 civs.
Both Arabia and Iroquois have popped towns. Does that make me unlucky with my hut?

1000 BC - Trade WM, CoL, Math, 34 gold from Iroquois for Polytheism. Trade 54 gold, WM from Arabia for Polytheism.
QSC stats:
7 towns (pop 14), 1 worker, 17 warriors (3 vets), 3 galleys, 2 barracks, 266 gold, 4 contacts.
Missing Philosophy, Currency, Construction and all optional techs.
149 shields collected for - perhaps - Great Lighthouse. (38 turns left.) Eventually, New York can take over the cow and speed this up.
900 BC - Met Germany. Traded contact with France and England, WM and 53 gold for scrap techs. Trade gold and world maps from England and France.
730 - War on Aztecs, using upgraded warriors and the odd horseman. Captured Tlateloco.
610 - Captured Tenochtitlan.
550 - Discovered Monarchy. Got a 4 turn anarchy, tried again but got 4 again.
510 - Gave Monarchy to India.
490 - Aztecs destroyed.
350 - Flipped palace to Tenochtitlan. I had ended up changing my GL build in New York to Forbidden Palace.
310 - Popped a "skilled warrior."
190 - Calcutta flips, odds 0.4%-0.7%.
70 BC - India destroyed.
230 AD - Germany destroyed. Peace with Iroquois for town, Currency, gold, WM. Enter Middle Ages. No AI has a Middle Age tech.
340 - Feudalism.
430 - England destroyed. Disasterous RNG vs France.
450 - Iroquois destroyed.
480 - Arabia destroyed.
520 - Finally got my first leader -> Great Lighthouse -> All luxuries.
New York changed from Great Lighthouse to Forbidden Palace.
560 - France gone. Conquest victory.

I was soundly beaten by Templar_X this time. I'm not quite sure how he did it, but he's darn good.

Possible factors:
T_x had much more gold to devour. Researching feudalism may have been unnecessary on my part.
Arabia and Iroquois may not have popped towns at world's end in T_x's monstruous game. (Of course this is not enough to explain the whole gap.)
T_x may have learned to sail better than the megalosaur, who made an effort to send separate galleys to some distant places, but for the most part ended up ship-chaining to Berlin.

 

[templar_x]

hi Megalou, T_x greets Megalosaur - good to see you finish, i already thought i´d play this one out all alone

your last (black) sentence made me smile...

i have an idea for the reason, but it may be premature before we see what e.g. Memento did.

it was NOT that those people didn´t pop towns at the end of nowhere. they did

but after i conquered india i chose a path that i was not at all sure at that time would be smart but may have helped towards the date. i packed nearly all my good units into nearly all my galleys and shipped them to the other continent. that´s why Germany (sorry, Lanzelot) was eliminated so early in my game. of course it delayed conquest of the closer continent, but i reasoned that this would not matter much. here i would continue with new troops, mainly horses, which would be fast enough to make their own way towards the embarkment point and i would not have to ship them all over from the starting island.

the cash was good, too, as it allowed me to rush a couple of units on the other continent. this was not decisive, but sure Feud wasn´t either.

@ Minutia - even though the other continent was a jungle monster, i had all my captured slaves build two routes through the whole land. i just love war logistics.

templar_x

 

[Sima Qian]

A thoroughly uneventful game for 99% of the time. Lincoln wins the UN vote, 7-1 vs. Joan. France came close to eliminating England and Germany, but their governments-in-exile survived on the islands.

But the research was sloooowww... ugh. I think I've secured the purple shield this game.

Spoiler :

Entry class: Predator
Game status: Diplomatic Victory for America
Game date: 1902 AD
Firaxis score: 397
Jason score: 1808
Time played: 02:55:50

 

[Megalou]

i have an idea for the reason, but it may be premature before we see what e.g. Memento did.

Perhaps settling by the fish? Commerce is often underestimated in the early game play, and you must have worked both fish for almost the whole game. In hindsight, I have toyed with the idea of working coastal tiles instead of mined plains, eg taking 40 turns for barracks. Little could be built anyway that had much long-term value.

 

[templar_x]

@ Megalou - the fish surely were nice at the start, however, my start was delayed by a couple of turns i had to get back.

but what i actually meant were the next two paragraphs to the one you quoted... i.e., the very early invasion of the 2nd continent.

templar_x

 

[Megalou]

@ Megalou - the fish surely were nice at the start, however, my start was delayed by a couple of turns i had to get back.

but what i actually meant were the next to paragraphes to the one you quoted... i.e., the very early invasion of the 2nd continent.

templar_x

OK, I though you meant that you didn't want to reveal what you thought was the biggest reason. It would have been easy to compare commerce if you had included some tech dates but all I could see was Monarchy 150 BC. I got Monarchy much earlier, 550 BC, but it's not a reliable comparison. Map Making? 1400 BC for me.

 

[templar_x]

@ Megalou - i opened my saves again, but sorry, i could not find out when i researched MM. from the position of my ships at 1000bc, i´d say, somewhen around when you got the tech as well.

but i really did not research a whole lot in my game....

templar_x

 

[Megalou]

So, the ultra-early invasion of the other continent was probably the key. Sounds like good Warlord strategy. I did have a lurking feeling myself that I was missing some kind of adaption to this unusual level. Once I reached France they had military like in Regent or Monarchy and there were many flips because of their good culture.

The starting positions were probably rather irrelevant then (provided one didn't walk away from the fish or settled in place.) The food access was slightly better by the fish, but that may have been roughly compensated by the long hike. And after all, no capital near the fish meant another town near the fish, albeit without automatic expansion to include the second fish in the radius. The 100cp expansion of Washington gave access to the second fish for those of us who settled in place.

 

[templar_x]

i agree. the position of the capital was probably a tie in our games. but Memento did a great job, even though his Domination was unfortunately delayed after a great start.

his strength was that he did not waste food, as i did. with +3 food i wasted 2 food every 4 turns which could have gone into another town. but there was no other town in reach in my game, so this food was lost and added up to 6 pop points in 1000bc. Memento!

and he managed to conquer Germany even earlier than i did. yes, it seems this has been the right Warlord strategy. i can tell you, i was not at all sure that it was when i applied it, and the forces were rather light for the invasion of another continent.

France was relatively strong in my game as well, they had more units and culture than i would have expected. but by then i already transferred lots of units from the closer contintent over, so they still faltered quickly.

templar_x

 

[CKS]

Open, Diplomatic win in 1776.

I wandered at the start, put 4 towns on the starting island (and later took one from the Indians), and was off to a very slow start. I couldn't decide what victory condition I wanted to pursue, though I did decide to skip the 20K very early on. I thought for a while I might go for a spaceship, but I got bored and decided to take the earlier diplomatic victory. Once I got over to the nearby continent things went better, but speedy conquest is not my forte. Eventually I reached Salamanca (24 turns after 1240, whenever that was), and when I got a GL shortly thereafter, I put the FP there. I wiped out the Aztecs and the Indians, and the eventual vote was 4-1 for me.

An amusing thing I'd never noticed before: Salamanca had the Great Wall and the Sistine Chapel. When I look on the F5 screen, both of them are listed with the culture they acquired before I took over.

 

[Lanzelot]

Glad that I did it in time this month... I didn't take notes, so can't say much, only that I tried to follow CKS' idea of exploiting the FP rank corruption bug, but I didn't get a leader until very late, so I ended up doing the "normal" palace jump and creating two regular cores. (At least I got a leader eventually for rushing the FP in Mecca. The "pre-build close to Washington ended up needing 90 more turns to complete, after Washington was disbanded... I converted that into an aqueduct later on.)

My palace went to Salamanca, which was definitely the best land and therefore my first target. I wonder why most others seem to have gone for Tenochtitlan as capital, that wasn't that great a dwelling either, was it?!

Lanzelot

 

[Megalou]

It simply took me too long to conquer a substantial part of Iroquois territory. Add to this some delay for transportation of workers and possibly a delay in establishing trade routes. I wanted a palace jump sooner than that.

 

[Lanzelot]

It simply took me too long to conquer a substantial part of Iroquois territory. Add to this some delay for transportation of workers and possibly a delay in establishing trade routes. I wanted a palace jump sooner than that.

Yes, I guess it makes sense for the quick con/dom VCs, where you need only a handful of towns for quickly producing horsemen early on. However, for diplomatic victory I think it was the right choice to wait a bit longer and choose the "juicy" location. I'm sure I would not have been able to maintain 4-turn research throughout the second half of the MA and the entire IA with the small Aztecian core.

BTW: I started my golden age by building The Great Wall around 1100AD. I didn't see anyone else mention it, so what did others do about their GA?

 

[Memento]

I don´t build any Wonders->no GA

 

[Megalou]

I started my golden age by building The Great Wall around 1100AD. I didn't see anyone else mention it, so what did others do about their GA?

I was enjoying my Golden Age when I won the game! In 530 AD I was finally able to rush the Great Lighthouse to get 8 luxuries. Four turns later the game ended.

 

[templar_x]

no GA for me

templar_x