Contender, Diplomatic victory in 1700AD
Very different game from JerichoHill. In fact, we allready discussed our games. Lazy as I am, I'll just post that here
After my first
spoiler, I recieved the following PM from JerichoHill:
PM1
JerichoHill said:
How in the world did you have such a great start? Liberalism at 500AD is amazing! I thought I had an early Diplo win (and had alot of very lucky breaks!), but I think you toasted me.
If you were using specialists to get there, then that may be why. I've never gotten good at understanding when to have a specialist vs. growing my city.
What did you do to tech so much? Could you possibly send me your save game file?
PM 2
me said:
Haha, thanks for the compliments. I just cottagespammed a lot + the fact that I could keep my science slider at 90% to 100% throughout the game helped a great deal. Getting an early religion and shrine and building a marketplace, grocer and bank (and settling the three GP's I got after the one that built the shrine) helped a lot with this. Combine this with early CS from the oracle, early academy (by building a library right after the oracle and instantly hiring to scientists) and you've got great science potential.
Building only cottages did have negative influence on my great people spamming. I only popped 7 (partly by missing the parthenon), of which 4(!) were great prophets!!! GRRR. I did pop an extra GS with physics, so I had three GS's to pop techs. Plus because of no GE I had to build the frigging UN all with hammers (and loads of trees )... In the end I only ended up with a 1700AD win after 6 missed tries: Washington took quite a while to convice I was kind and nice and so on...
Great fun though, piling up all your friends on monty for the diplo points and paying off everybody take my civics, religion, and generally to like me
I'm very curious to how your game went, because I guess you may have done quite well also!
PM3/4
JerichoHill said:
I settled on the desert hill, which gave my capital city 2 gem resources so my commerce to start off was killer. That's why I think I had such a good start. I popped Bronze working from the goody hut, which made the jungle barb city take able early. I focused my civ expansion towards food resources and cottage land. I likely spend too much time hooking up my cities with roads rather than just spamming and spamming cottages everywhere. But I spammed a good bit.
I'll do this from the top of my head as I haven't written it down but I think I did the following:
Techs:
AH
Archery (goody hut)
Mysticism
Polytheism (I did NOT shoot for the religion, but I got it nevertheless, which was quite a surprise)
I then changed my mind and went pottery first (through agriculture and the wheel)
Writing
Priesthood
COL (found Confucianism)
CS (with oracle)
Bronze working
Alpha
Literature
Traded all techs for alpha etc with Lizzy and Fred including IW. This boosted relations, and boosted their science so they would keep up with me. With IW I could hook up the second gems for my third city.
Philosophy (founding Taoism) (switch to pacifism)
Paper
Education
Traded Metal Casting and Machinery
Liberalism (it was around 600AD btw ) and took printing press
Traded up to optics so I could directly start on astronomy.
Then teched to mass media, used GS on physics and radio (not on scientific method, as to keep my GL working as long as possible and increasing the chance top pop a GS).
Mass media was teched somewhere around 1550 or so, as I was able to build the UN in 1636 (rushed the last 5 turns with gold, as I did not have the mids and had to tech to Universal Suffr myself).
Builds:
Moscow:
Worker
warrior
warrior
settler
archer
archer
library (with 8 turns to go, switched to: )
Oracle (finish in 1100 ish, continued library)
Settler
Workers
Archers
Buildings
Academy
Granery (much too late!!!!!)
Forge (for my chance on a GE)
More buildings (market, grocer, bank, uni, obs, monastary etc etc, see save)
UN
Other cities started with worker, units, library, granery etc
Workers:
Build pastry on cow
Build mine on gems
Cottage on FP
Cottages elsewhere
Didn't spend too much time building roads, only too hook up resources and connecting cities. I did not build enough workers though, this slowed me down quite some.
JerichoHill said:
My science slider stayed at 80-90 for awhile, but slipped to 60% around CS time. However, I don't think I ever had anything but the largest economy. It recovered after revolting to bureaucracy, which I stayed in the whole game.
I'm going to guess the big difference in our games was that you got the religion to go around. In my game, elizabeth jumped out to a huge religious lead (I think she founded 4 religions). Toku founded one and converted Frederick. Fred was the only civ I was worried about.
I managed through 500AD to wage no war. I'm sure you had a similiar experience. I did not beeline to optics so I didnt discover Monty until much later, but by that time, he was ripe for mowing over.
I didn't go for the oracle either.
I never went to war. As soon as I met people, I started gifting techs. Toku got alpha from me, then literature, then he converted to hinduism and was my best friend. Elizabeth converted to hinduism quickly, turned to Christianity once (she founded that) but after loads of missionaries she swithed back. Fred was also my best friend. He founded Islam and converted (after having adopted hinduism). This was good thing, as he was the largest CIV and nobody really liked him anymore for being Muslim .
I made A stupid mistake trading with Monty, as that hurt relations with Wash bigtime. This caused me to finish probably 50 years later than was possible. Eventually everybody except Monty and Fred voted for me (Monty was declared on by me and everybody somewhere in the 1600's AD) and Fred was my (friendly ) opponent.
JerichoHill said:
I must say, not getting your GPs, shrine, or academy, to only lose to you by about 10 turns I think is pretty remarkable. Mustve done something right! But I definitely need to learn how to run specialists. Thats something Im going to try with GOTM25, which I missed.
What slowed me down:
Trading with Monty... big booboo
.
Not specializing enough so I didn't get a lot of Great People (only 7 + one from physics)
Bit of bad luck with the Great People I got, 4 of them were GP's (of which I used one for the shrine and 3 were settled in the capital).
Missed Partenon...
Didn't settle my island enough (Though I don't think this would have made the difference in the end).
Not enough workers (could have had cottages and resources up earlier and could have irrigated everything quicker in the end game.
JerichoHill said:
Any advice on specialists? How do you know when its worth it to lose 2 food but have a specialist (assuming your city is still growing into usable squares, like grassy cottages)?
My Great People were two GE's. One built the Taj Mahal for a Golden Age, but I squandered two turns in revolt (I failed to plan my change in civics with the Taj Mahal building). That was a mistake.
I popped a GS with physics and 3 GM's I think ,which I sent on trips for gold.
First GS is easy: Library, hire two scientist, cost what may. I did get lucky as it was a 55% chance one getting a scientist (had oracle in capital).
From then on the best thing to do is have a food rich city and irrigate everything, build granary asap, Caste system and pacifism asap. Build parthenon (allthough this does foul the gene-pool a little).
I tend to let my city grow first very quickly, then hire maximum scientists.
This game was little different though.
The capital was the only early city with fresh water to irrigate, however, I needed to tech quickly, so I built cottages. This way I could only hire about 3 scientist max. In the late game, I did farmspam my jungle city and hired 6 scientist which gave me my second to last GS.
So it was a bit messy.
I did do the game again, after submitting my first (1700AD diplo victory
) attempt, first cottaging some tiles around the capital, then farming everything to make it a proper GP farm, but the dice were not in my favor. Again only Great Prophets, but what was worse, I had bad luck with religion, which would not spread quickly enough. Plus that I seemed to tech a little more slowly without the towns around my capital.
JerichoHill said:
When I finished Mass Media, I turned off all research and was getting about 1500 GPT, plus my GM's, made me reach the gold need to rush it at about 16000 gold total (It starts I think at 25000 gold for that speed).
I had to tech to the Univ Suffr tech to buy it...
JerichoHill said:
That may have reduced your time to victory, and about the only thing I think I did better than you! Well, maybe my diplo was better. I waged two wars against monty, both times with washy, mansa, and elizabeth as allies. Monty had been trying to wipe washington out, so that was a good bonus. I traded away all non essential resources to get the appreciate resources bonus, gave gifts of 20 gold every turn to allies to get the "gifts bonus" and always gave techs when asked (and then traded them to everyone else immediately).
Although Elizabeth and Mansa were friendly with frederick, my rival, they had +10 for him and +20-something for me. TOku was negative and Washy was +15. I won on my first try. The turn of the vote I gifted everything I had to everyone whose votes I needed, except for cities. I was the largest civ in terms of population by wiping out monty (actually, I was larger than fred before dow'ing monty
I won on my sixth try. As mentioned, Wash wasn't happy with me trading with monty. Only after I gifted gifted him Liberalism, changed my civics to all his favorites (thus lowering my happy bonus on all the religious freak friends I had, but they stayed Friendly nonetheless, including Toku), he voted for me.
JerichoHill said:
Did you have a HUGE barbarian continent in the game? We did, it was nuts...No one conquered it
Yup neither did I conquer it. In fact, I never built more than a couple of archers
Wow... we can post this directly in the final spoiler thead