GOTM70 Final Spoiler

[neilmeister]

GOTM70 Final Spoiler

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

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Did any of the AI give you any trouble?

Comments on the map or scenario welcome.

 

[High King J.J.]

Diplomatic victory 1932 AD

Nice scenario, (really!) but one thing really hindered my space race: the Space elevator could not be built. Anywhere. No matter what techs were researched. Not even when the Apollo Program was complete. I had to check the handy list about Civ4 version rule changes but found no reason why Space elevator was unavailable (grayed out in every city's building options).
So I had to try an emergency option that surprisingly worked: some leaders voted for my diplomatic victory even though they were only pleased with me, not friendly.

In the ancient past I settled on the coast next to river and rice. The Honshu island was very nicely optimized for three cities, thanks neilmeister and once I got a galley going I colonized the other islands and got two cities in the Korean peninsula. Later Khan of course surprise attacked and razed the northern mainland city which had a decent culture rate. I Had Catherine declare on Khan but later she chickened out and made peace. I rushed some samurai troops and held the second mainland city and even colonized near the razed city ruin. Khan had built the Pyras and was running Police state ever since with later vassalage and theocracy civics, so his military was rather problematic. I managed to send some 'rais to scout and pillage his nearest city, parking one on a forested hill. This proved fortunate because when the next wave of keshiks and cats arrived with crossbows guarding the stacks, I had two 'rais fortfied on the hill. Some keshiks and whatnot bypassed my 'rais and then the arriving cat stack attacked my fortified 'rais, eventually killing them but wasting the cats that would have levelled any defences in my cities. After that Khan agreed to my peace offer, giving all his gold 200+ and around 10 gpt so that my few defending units would not attack his strong forces and fortified cities.
Later Khan attacked Catherine again and took several cities despite Cathy's tech advantage, keshiks, macemen and muskets wearing the few defending riflemen down. I stayed out of the fight teching until I had a force of tanks. Then I proceeded to annihilate Khan.
The two Chinas never fought each other and instead invaded half of India. The Q-dude was more aggressive invading Catherine while she fought Khan.
While Japan was developing the captured mongol cities (talk about a Northern Resource Area, from Debt of Honour by Tom Clancy), Cathy attacked in a most cowardly way: she had open borders with Q-dude who refused to open his borders to me. Q's cultural borders were right next to some captured mongol cities despite extensive cultural developement so Cathy's artilleries could bombard my defences with impunity. Fortunately my infantry and tanks held and my bombers rained death on the attackers. Soon I could advance on Cathy who refused until the end to reveal the secret of Fission. She took it with her to the grave.
By this time everyone had a space program. Asoka was building parts when Q-dude invaded again and took India's capital. I bribed Q-dude to make peace when Asoka had only two cities left, I wanted Asoka to vote in the UN. Interestingly India's spaceship components remained despite the loss of a capital city, another contradiction to the handy list of Game Play Differences.
Mao was teching away while others warred. My late Apollo program completion hindered my progress, I had planned to build the Space elevator and speed up the production. When Mao completed the SS engine and was researching the last tech needed for SS components I decided to try voting for diplomatic victory. Q-dude was the other candidate but for some reason Mao voted for me and Asoka's 10 votes abstaining didn't matter. Of course by this time I had taken both Mongolia and Russia and had the population to win any other UN vote by myself.

It was a close call thanks to both the unbuildable Elevator and inability to destroy completed SS components by capturing a capital. Still, for me Monarch is maybe the most enjoyable difficulty and the welcome lack of an early strategic, hoofed resource perhaps limits the warmongers' cavalry conquest forcing a more peaceful game.
Nice balance with the available land on the islands, just little enough to make even a peacemonger dream of mainland cities and still enough to allow a modest but viable civilization if Khan managed to drive the samurais to the ocean.

High J.J.

 

[Conquistador 63]

@High King J.J.:
This game was built on the "great plains" mapscript, which is a regional type of map simulating that region in real world North America. As a consequence, the space elevator can only be built in the lower part (1/5?) of the map, as it is closer to real world's tropics. I also went to space but did not bother to build the elevator, it is in most games just a waste of hammers.

@Neilmeister: fantastic job with the map creation and opponent selection. I found the Himalaya was a nice touch, giving some well-deserved protection to Asoka from his grumpy neighbors.

@note to self: remember to refrain from typing posts from tablet next time - wait to get home and type from desktop pc instead

 

[Alamankarazieff]

1810, domination

First, great job, the maps was a lot of fun. I settled one south, expanded on the islands around, build the Great Lighthouse, and missed my CS slingshot by 2 turns...
At that point, I had settled one city on the mainland, very close to a mongolian one, securing the gold and a foothold. My great merchant from the great lighthouse bulbed machinery as I slowly crawled towards civil service.
From them on, it was samurai/cat fun, God, I love these babies. Siege that can kill are a bunch of fun too. I crushed the mongolian, and true to herself, Catherine backstabbed me.
I was seriously in the tech lead, so I unleashed QSH on her. That proved a mixed idea since he chewed her entirely and spit out the bones, leaving him quite big.
In the meantime, I used the newly captured Pyramids of Karakorum to get a massive tech lead, lib MT, start building cavalries, upgraded my samurais to rifles, and then attacked QSH.
I suffered then from my usual indecisiveness : I knew this was total war from them on, so I really should have stopped teching and just flood the world with cavalry. But I continued trying to build universities to finish Oxford to go... blah.
I got steel, and finally communism which saved my overextended economy allowing me to seriously slide the culture counter when my cities were a +10 unhappy faces (while in Police State) from the war.
After destroying QSH, I turned to Mao, who had rifles and cannons, but a puny army. So I just massively threw cavalries at 1,3% odds at him after settling every nooks and cranies of the world until I got my percentage.

It was my first Vanilla Gotm (and probably my first vanilla game ever actually) and I enjoyed the little differences, but I got addicted to the BTS buffy interface which is so awesome.
Anyway thanks a lot, the game was really fun, really well balanced.

 

[neilmeister]

I'm glad you guys enjoyed it. This was actually my first map created for any xOTM, and included a couple of false starts. Indeed it was intended to create a strong and secure homeland but encourage players to get off the islands.

Sorry about the Space Elevator, I chose the original map script as Great Plains, despite there being very little resemblance, as it shares a similiar latitude area as the Asian mainland.

I deliberately deprived you of Copper, as I didn't want any early Axe rushing. Samurai's are just too much fun. There were horses kind-of close by, for late game cavalry, right next to the mongol capital IIRC.

Its interesting to see the final results, as in my testing Asoka & Catherine were invariably the most powerful, benefitting from their better starting areas. Asoka was supposed to challenge you for space, Catherine in her normal backstab ways.

Welcome to Vanilla GOTM Alaman, I know it can be quite startling to play without Buffy, and really annoying when you realise you still get Anarchy in a Golden Age

 

[High King J.J.]

Great plains. D'oh!
I guess that pre-game discussion conclusion that we are at the equator meant just that we are in the middle portion of the map, not that we ARE on the equator.

In that sense, maybe the Game Play Differences Between Expansion Packs list statement
"Resource bubbles point toward the equator" should be rephrased
"Resource bubbles point toward the middle of the map, regardless of the location of the equator"?

Well, did survive this time.
But should someone investigate if captured capital really does destroy completed SS components, or does the victory condition screen lie about completed SS components?
I lack the skill to do so efficiently.

High J.J.

 

[neilmeister]

Capturing the capital definetely has no effect in Vanilla or Warlords. I captured Mansa's capital in WOTM 36 only 2 turns before he launched his SS.

 

[High King J.J.]

@Neilmeister:

This is what Game Play Differences Between Expansion Packs thread says for Warlords:
"Space win occurs at launch, capturing or razing capital does not destroy completed components..."

This is what is says for Vanilla:
"Capturing or razing enemy capital destroys completed spaceship components"

so I'm wondering whether capturing a capital destroys SS parts in Vanilla. WOTM 36 is not vanilla.

High J.J.

 

[kcd_swede]

I took over the Mongols and the Green Chinese with Samurai. Then it was Cavs and Grens to take over India. The Red Chinese were to be next, but when I loaded up the game after a few days away, I found I had lost the bloodlust for domination. Of course, seeing Infantry there and SAM Inf in their friends Russia... I decided it would be easier to just build the UN and have Friendly China top off my votes for diplo victory.

Pretty slow for a diplo victory... but it was pretty fast once I decided on a Diplo victory. It would have been extremely slow for a domination, though.

 

[Jouzou]

1888 AD diplomatic win.

This is my first victory on Monarch! Because of the late finish date, the score isn't very flattering, but I don't even care. The events prior to 1AD are described in my first spoiler, so here's what happened afterwards:

As it says in the first spoiler, I was close to getting access to the samurais and I was plotting war against Genghis. We did fight soon, but he was the one who actually declared. After destroying his invading force, I went for revenge. My samurais totally annihilated his longbows and keshiks. He was reduced to one city on the island to the east (which wasn't accessible by galley, to my mild annoyance).

After the Mongol issue was solved, I teched gunpowder and MilTrad and cavalry-stomped both Chinas. I left them alive with one city as well. While technically still in the game, they became a non-factor. My biggest blunder probably happened at the beginning of the first Chinese war. I went in with too few cavalry and almost got my ass handed to me. Fortunately, Qin considered that I was still strong, so he gave me gold for peace. After 10 turns I came back better prepared and conquered him.

Russia and India had become so big and so advanced that I didn't feel like sending my cavalry their way. I decided to go for diplomacy or - failing that - space. I had 50% of the worlds pop. Cathy had 25% and she liked me. Thus, I counted on Asoka building the UN which he eventually did. Not before declaring on me and capturing a couple of my cities, but oh well.

 

[neilmeister]

Nice game Jouzou, congrats on the first Monarch win!

As long as Asoka was second biggest he would have been your opponent if you built the UN.

If he wasn't second biggest there are a couple of tactics that can help:
- DoW him and leave your border cites empty = tranfer pop from you to him.
- build UN in a city near him and gift the city to him. You can check what cities he will accept before you build in the trade window.

 

[kcd_swede]

I went in with too few cavalry and almost got my ass handed to me.

Next time you should equip your cavalry with horses instead of asses.

 

[Jouzou]

As long as Asoka was second biggest he would have been your opponent if you built the UN.

He was the third biggest, which is exactly why I avoided building it myself (my Ironworks city could have done it in 12 turns).

- build UN in a city near him and gift the city to him. You can check what cities he will accept before you build in the trade window.

I was considering this, actually. I even had a Great Engineer in store, but I never got around to doing it. I kind of gambled on Asoka being more willing to build wonders than Cathy.

Next time you should equip your cavalry with horses instead of asses.

My military advisors had been hitting the Sake too hard (again). Hence, the asses.

 

[MarleysGh0st]

Space Race Victory in 1916: Score 24,999 point.

My early game consisted of peaceful expansion through the Japanese islands, building the GLH and Colossus for the economic boost. By 350 AD I had one city (Kagoshima) on the Korean peninsula, next to the gold, and I had taken one more Korean city from barbs, just before Genghis would have captured it.

And then Genghis launched a surprise attack and razed Kagoshima. While I concentrated on the war, Mao took advantage of the opening and settled his own city on the west coast of Korea.

What followed was a 1,000 year war to eliminate Genghis, during which time I forgot all about advanced strategies like the CS sling and creating a great person farm. By the time I eliminated Genghis in 1500, I'd lost my tech lead to Catharine and Mao. Catherine eliminated Asoka in 1510 (the diplomatic invitation to join the war arrived after he was already eliminated!); everyone else was one good terms and would remain peaceful through the rest of the game. So it was to be a space race for me.

Fortunately, contrary to High King J.J.'s report, I did have a place to build the Space Elevator, in Nagoya (a.k.a. Taiwan). Two Great Engineers helped rush that wonder, which let me play catch up on the space ship race and complete it in 1916, when Catherine only had an engine left to finish.

Not a great game, but a win's a win.

 

[zamint3]

1AD: I start building Samurais, getting ready to invade GK
225AD: Just when I'm ready to DOW he declares on me..
940 AD: GK is eliminated, Samurais did a good job, saw some LBs at the end.
1130AD: DOW on Qin. Researched MT same turn and upgraded a bunch of knights, got 1500g from trade mission to Moscow a few turns earlier.
1260AD: Qin eliminated
1290AD: DOW on Mao
1330AD: Mao eliminated
1380AD: DOW on Cathy
1440AD: Cathy eliminated
1480AD: DOW on Asoka, same turn Rifles appear. Asoka has quite a big army, but foolishly he tries to counter attack, and Rifles out in the open are a lot easier to handle than the fortified ones in a hill city.
1540AD: My endless stream of Cavalry conquers the last Indian cities.
1545AD: Conquest victory for Tokugawa

It was nice not to have Toku as an AI opponent for once

 

[Htadus]

Nice date and score Z

I managed to finish my game.

It did not go as I planned with GK so close so I went on war monger mode. First war was stopped when GK had only two cities left and go one for peace as well as a minor tech.

Next I dowed Red Chinese and took 3 cities and got peace for techs. Next eliminated GK. The was about to hit Qin(?) again but Mao chose to close borders and withold resources. Oh well. Mao was next and took all but 2 cities. His capital was relocated to the single tile island to his south. Then Dowed against Qin and cathy untill they were both gone by late 15th century. So I built a several settlers to reach 66% but then saw the score was nearly 140k so I thought that I will see how high I can go with this. But the cities were already expandind and gave me a Domi in the early 16th century. But I nearly got 160K and just learned bio. Not bad for a slow war plan gone wrong.

I used samurai's very effectively in this game. The cats would drop the culture to 0 and samurai kill the LB's or in the early game anything else that was in its way. Then I used calvs. I rarely use them and as expected they are very overpowered. LB, Pike and maces had very little chance against them at 60% culture and even less when the cats were there before the calvs to drop the defense. may be next game I will race to Cavs and see what they can really do.

Thanks for a fun game and a cool map.

 

[-Asterix-]

Settled south next to the rice, second city went to the southern island with lots of seafood and third next to gold in Korean penisula. Oracle went on t71 (Asoka) as the first wonder so no CS sling for me, built GLH instead just to be disappointed with routes worth 1C each instead of 2C as in BTS. Self-teched CS around 1ad.

Genghis was nice to build Mids for me so I had to build some cats (probably too many, a bad habit of mine) and DOW him around 100ad. Hell, he even insisted on finishing TGL a bit before I rammed my cats to Karakorum. Genghis was quickly finished but I started to see those pesky longbows everywhere already in 400-500ad, way earlier than I thought I would. Genghis didn't have them but everybody else did once I was ready to move on. This made me cautious, maybe too cautious, and I started to build some dumbos (thanks Asoka!) and samurai instead of just plain cats. Also, I was still third in score after finishing with Genghis, and around 700ad I was the second last in the poll about "the most advanced civs". Cathy and Asoka looked like monsters.

After Genghis it was Qin's turn to go and Mao followed next. Used mostly cats to attack things, phants and samurai were more like stack defenders against counterattacks. Things slowed down a bit as longbows, xbows and maces were tougher nut to crack but I had the masses on my side.

After the China conquests it was time for Asoka. Asoka would have been already enough to reach the domination limit with some border pops but I insisted to use some (or dozens) of the hard-earned knights against Cathy and had time to take few cities from her before the end. Even crushed her nice SOD of around 15-20 units (mainly knights and maces) with 20-30 cats just to notice I still had around 50 of them in my SOD after the losses (and more elsewhere). Damn those things are powerful in vanilla!

So the result was 1330ad domination. Quite nice but could have been a lot faster if I had started with Genghis earlier and gotten one or more others down before longbows. The start was quite fast but I think I didn't take advantage of it properly. On the other hand, also others (especially Cathy and Asoka) had nice land to begin with and I haven't seen AIs to tech and develop that fast on Monarch earlier.

Thanks for the scenario, neilmeister!

 

[The-Hawk]

I decided to try space this time. I rarely play it and this looked like a fairly challenging map for space.

The only early wonder I built was GLH. I decided to forego Oracle because of lack of marble and because I wanted to focus on REX to take advantage of my GLH. By 150 BC, I had 8 cities founded. Luckily, GK was kind enough to build Mids and Parthenon for me. I ended up taking all of GK's lands, then Qin. I picked up GLib, Notre Dame and Hagia from Qin but GLib was obsolete before the city came out of anarchy.

After these two wars, I had 21 cities. I decided to stop there and run a SE all the way to the end. This got to be a little difficult because of emancipation pressure. However, I built Broadway and Rock and Roll in my Iron Works city and lots of happy buildings in all other cities. I was able to carry on with caste all the way to the end. I also built Statue of Liberty since I was running representation the whole time. I happened to pop a couple of unexpected GEs, so I built Three Gorges on the mainland. As a result, all of my spaceship parts were built in ex-GK and ex-Qin cities.

I also was a little blindsided by Space Elevator. I happened to have 2 GE's at the end (one from Fusion) so I decided to research Robotics right after Fusion. However, as others have already pointed out, once I researched it, I found my only cities that could build it were pretty far south. Unfortunately, they were not set up for production. I built it anyhow, but I think it came online about 3 turns before the end of the game.

Final date was 1828 AD for 55K points.

neilmeister, heck of a first effort. I enjoyed this one a lot.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I "used" Organized Religion and Theocracy for centuries, only to realise that I had forgotten to select my State Religion. It was so well spread around and I thought that I timed whipping so perfectly... when I realised my error, I just switched immediately, so that I wouldn't forget... and, sure enough, it was during one of my Golden Ages.

One of my Quick Speed (Challenger Save) Golden Ages, that is, a Game Speed on which Golden Ages are extra short.

Bah, whatever.

I had an early fleet of Galleys and should have settled to the west when I saw my chance but got caught up in settling all of the juicy locations nearer to our starting area. The southern China that settled in the area to our west made it to Infantry as a result.

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself... I went for a militaristic game... had a bit of an Axeman + Chariot war with Mongolia but my troops were soon obsolete (that's Quick Speed for ya). The northern China gave me no end of headaches. Of course, I also got ballsy and refused two of Cathy's demands, so I was at war with both of them for quite some time. My Samurais were nice but they faced off against a ton of Chokonus plus Russian Knights.

It was a mess, a great big mess. I kept losing and recapturing Cities, watching as Russia would sneak in and capture then raze a City which I'd fought hard to obtain... a total mess.

Finally, I got Asoka, the genious, to declare war on Russia and both Chinas at once. I guess that he figured that "one China is the same as two Chinas, so what the hey." That fact helped, as I was able to capture Cities from the AIs as they were capturing Cities from Asoka.

I eventually peaced out with Russia after finishing off the last straggler Mongolian City and taking down most of northern China, only to, as I was saying before, declare war on the southern China and depositing my troops in their borders (Calvalry and Catapults at that point) only to belatedly realise that the southern China had Infantry. Out went the Catapults and in came the upgraded Cannons and I was actually okay.

The toughest battles were against stacks of enemy siege units, which are particularly powerful in Vanilla. Fortunately, the southern China hadn't built any or many of those and it was only stacks of them from Asoka and Cathy that really gave me a lot of trouble.

I wasn't quite sure if I was going for Domination or Conquest until I realised that "I can take them all on!!!" and decided to go for Conquest. I was a bit slow about it... I waited to capture most Russian and Indian Cities until the last turn of the game, only to find myself short of the Domination Land Area by 0.45% (i.e. I could have captured said Cities earlier). I suppose that I could have said that I'd meant to do so, but it was more luck than anything.

I picked up what seems like a nice Final Score--more than 200K, but maybe that's just par for the course on this map. The win didn't happen until in the 1800s, though, thanks to that Quick Speed and my troubles in warring.

It was a really neat map layout with good, challenging opponents, and I particularly liked (well, didn't like, but therein lay the fun) having to face 2 opponents with Chokonus.

I ended the game in a Golden Age since I finally got a Great Person that didn't match with the existing two that I had, although I think that I benefitted from a whole turn of it.

All in all, a lot of fun. Thanks for the game!

 

[-Asterix-]

Great game and nice write-up, Dhoomstriker! Made me laugh.

I picked up what seems like a nice Final Score--more than 200K, but maybe that's just par for the course on this map. The win didn't happen until in the 1800s, though, thanks to that Quick Speed and my troubles in warring.

That score seems just mad. Scaling between game speeds looks to be a bit off...