GOTM69 Final Spoiler

[jesusin]

GOTM69 Final Spoiler

So how did your game after 1AD go? Tell everyone and discuss in this thread, subject to...

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How did you manage your relation with the EMPIRE?
What have you learned this game?

 

[cas]

One city conquest victory. 1785AD.

Moved the scout 1NW to reveal pigs and corn. Moved the settler 1W to settle on the PH. Good food, good production for a single city.

Diplo or conquest
Diplo was the obvious easy victory path. Almost assured Qin would be the UN opponnent. But conquest fits Monty better. Also Qin's tech rate stalled during the early/mid game due to size of empire with no courthouses, so I think his large empire was actually a net-negative for him.

Tech Path:
Ag-AH-writing were the initial techs. No horses complicates things a little.
Oracle->CS sling 1600BC
alphabet-Literature for backfill low techs and Great Library 525BC.
NE/HE shortly after. I was able to trade ivory to Toku (haha) for marble.
Then onto the necessary techs for MT. I saved liberalism for steel. In the end, cavalry would have been sufficient. Cannons were a fallback plan and moderately useful to break Qins army. MT in 1180AD which is ~15 turns later than my goal, but by that time I had 11 flank2 horses ready to upgrade and just enough gold to do it.

builds
worker -> lots of warriors for fogbusting considering our location and I'm not filling land with cities. Barbs were annoying, but I kept them mostly in check. Quite a few missionaries to keep neighbors from attacking while i was weak. Mix in Oracle, Glibrary, HG, NE/HE. Horse archers to upgrade to cavalry later. Then one cavalry every two turns most of the game...eventually some cannons and grenadiers.

Horses
With no horses, my initial plan was to trade Elizabeth for them, but I couldn't get her 'pleased' fast enough and she traded them away to someone else. I spread Confu to Elizabeth, Alex, and MM to avoid attack early. Tao to Qin to keep everyone against him. But in the end, I traded iron to Qin for horses by switching to Tao.

Great People:
I used most of my great people for bulbs. Rough estimate based on memory:
6? GSci: academy, bulb philo, partial bulbs on edu, PP, chem, one settled
4? GPro: bulb Theo, Kong Miao, Dai Mao, one settled
3? GArt: partial bulb DivR, Nat, can't remember what I did with the 3rd

Wars
I took out the tech leaders first to keep the tech rate slower...so less pikes/knights to contend with until Qin. He had a large army by the end, but didn't use it effectively because the AI is stupid. I had Qin join in some of the wars along the way to speed up things.

MM 1190AD - 1330AD RIP
Eliz 1340AD - 1410AD RIP
Toku 1430AD - 1535AD RIP
Hatty 1540AD - 1590AD RIP
Alex 1605AD - 1640AD RIP
Qin 1650AD - 1785AD RIP

Fun game. Thanks for hosting.

cas

 

[Mitchum]

@Cas Did you do an OCC just for fun? Nice work.

I had a 1300s domination victory. Qin wasn't a problem in my game either. I too did a CS sling and then teched Machinery so that I could take over the world with maces. I hit most cities before LBs were around, so I didn't really need cats. I expect a much earlier Domination date will take this as I didn't take advantage of elephants or cats, which could be had much sooner than maces. The biggest issue with domination was having to settle several iceberg cities in order to reach the land domination limit.

 

[cas]

@Mitchum

Yes, I have more fun with one/low city games than large empires in general. Large empire mm is not my thing. Also, I can't compete with the civ pros on fast finishes / large scores --> dom vics...so there isn't much use trying for medals. Prince diff / normal settings is not a challenge for me...just a fun level to try silly strategies.

In the past when I've tried mace/cat(treb BtS) wars with one city, it is easier at the beginning but hard to finish off the last 1-2 civs because the AI refills the land like weeds. In vanilla cavalry only require MT/gunpowder/HBR...not rifling. The AI doesn't defend well against 2-move units...even on normal speed. 60% retreat odds doesn't hurt either.

I might try a one city EE if we have a noble-monarch BOTM with a leader that fits anytime soon. Raging barbs / noble would be fun to see if I can get the barbs to destroy everyone without actually declaring war.

cas

 

[zamint3]

Started conquest late, forgot how slow the AI are on Prince

I might try a one city EE

What's that?

Btw: Nice job cas...

 

[cas]

Started conquest late, forgot how slow the AI are on Prince

What's that?

Btw: Nice job cas...

EE = espionage economy. settled great spies / espionage slider over self research and liberal use of spies. BOTM obviously...not vanilla. It's very tedious moving all the spies, but with one city I wouldn't have empire mircomangement to handle so it should be tolerable.

cas

 

[WelshGandalf]

I got a culture victory in around 1824AD.

I had 2 great artists just sitting around at the end - after one round of culture bombing I had 2 cities that were both 1 turn from legendary, so that was a bit annoying.

Diplomatically, I tried to stay on the good side of the Chinese. This led to me being at war with the... Egyptians I think (I finished the game about 15 days ago). I beat them up somewhat & got to around 11 cities.

I stayed at 100% culture for a long time, thanks to other cities running merchants & building wealth. I did pop a few great merchants, I sent them on trade missions which let me keep the culture slider at 100%, so that was pretty nice. I always thought anything but great artists were bad, but not so in my experience from this game.

That well-known warmonger Mansa Musa declared on me near the end, but about 3 turns too late for me to worry about.

What bonuses did the Chinese have then? 2 settlers perhaps?

 

[neilmeister]

This was quite a fun game.

I didn't have any problems with the empire at all, as Qin completely overexpanded at the start, and could not afford to research anything. I think he must have started with about 5 settlers as he settled a whole bunch of cities very early.

Anyway, I smashed Lizzie down to one city and accidentally made peace with her. So I turned my forces west and conquered Toku, then Mansa, then finally Hatty. Qin and Alex got off without me taking any of their cities, simply because all of my road links went west. I don't recall building Jaguars, as my army went from Axes to Maces, with the obligatory Cats & Phants of course.

I was determined to get a fast domination (hopefully the fastest ), otherwise I probably would have gone conquest. In the end, I only eliminated Elizabeth, with Toku, Mansa and Hatty all surviving with one city each.

All of that ice was a major pain, spawning no end of barbs, who would approach my warrior defended cities.

I settled dozens of cities, hiring artists, at the end to claim all of the land.

 

[psparky]

Culture win in 1848.

After a string of defeats and incomplete games, it was nice to get a comfortable win, and it confirms my feeling that I'm pretty solid at prince and challenged at monarch.

Settled SE and went Poly for a religion (for border pops, and planning to spread it), and built the shrine in the cap. Managed to get JC, Liz and Qin converted. Wasted quite a bit of effort trying to OB with Toku. I was never at war.

Having seen the extent of the ice, I thought dom looked tricky, so settled on trying for culture. The three cities were the cap, a city about 4 tiles to the east, and one a few files to the west near the gold. These were the first three settled. All three were heavily cottaged, and there were no cottages anywhere else, the plan being that when the slider went to 100% culture, I wouldn't be wasting much commerce on culture outside the big three. The other cities were a mix of production or farmed for specialists. And I had the shrine (of a fairly well spread religion) + bank to keep the economy going.

I built the other cities in a semicircle protecting the three key cities - they gave quite a buffer to give time to react to any invasions. I wanted nine cities of course, but actually built a tenth to complete the defence.

The lack of marble was a bit of a pain. One thing that caught me out was I didn't realize that the different religion's cathedrals have different double build resources - and I founded a second religion that needed marble when I could have gone for a different one. This cost about 13 turns. Had four religions with cathedrals in the key cities.

I was probably a bit late switching to 100% culture, just before I got to rifling I think. And I did pretty poorly on the Great Artist front - could have saved 7 turns if I hadn't got a GP and a GS in the end game (>70% GA expected).

So overall a pretty safe, solid game. With a bit better planing, and a little more risk, I could have knocked about 15-20 turns off the date. Of course, if I went all out for culture from the start, I could have done much better (or worse!).

Didn't have any issues with The Empire - in fact I wasn't sure who they were. Could have been Hatty, Mansa or Qin (it was him I see). I guess their edge would have been more of a factor at higher difficulty levels.

Thanks for the game jesusin.

 

[Mitchum]

I don't recall building Jaguars, as my army went from Axes to Maces, with the obligatory Cats & Phants of course.

I was pretty sure that using Elephants and Cats would be better than what I did, which was to wait for Maces before I really started conquering. After the CS sling, Maces just seemed too close to pass up...

I was determined to get a fast domination (hopefully the fastest )

I hope you get it too. That will make you a GOTM Eptathelete, no? There were nearly 40 submissions, including Domination specialists CP and JK, so it's going to be tough...

 

[neilmeister]

Thanks Mitchum, indeed I just need domination to complete the eptathlon.

Elephants weren't very useful with the attacking, I used them mainly to protect my CRIII Maces. Cats were a different story. Every time I start a Vanilla game I try to remind myself that Cats are super awesome, especially at low levels where they face Archers for a long time.

My stacks had about an equal number of Cats and cleanup troops.

edit: It took me forever to research MC and Machinery, as I had already crashed my economy smashing Lizzie and most of Toku.

 

[justjohn]

Diplo win in 1340AD (if I remember correctly).

Even with a shaky diplo start, diplo became easy after a while. Mansa, Elisabeth and Hat all became my best friends, and Qin my opponent as I knew early. Took out (most of) Alex to increase my votes and get some diplo war bonus. Toku was weak all game.

I was not able to produce a GE this game, which delayed my win by quite a number of turns. Used a cottage economy and had little trouble, with the occational barb axeman coming from south.

-jj-