GOTM72 - Final Spoiler

[civ_steve]

GOTM 72 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!

If you haven't told us already, or if you have more to add, tell us how your game ended. Also, we don't often set the difficulty level to Warlord - how do you feel about this difficulty level? I like to present a wide mix of game settings including low levels such as this one. Is about 1 Warlord game a year OK? More or less?

 

[Più Freddo]

Predator, going for Conquest

The first step is the hardest

In order to settle on the Hill and use the Bonus Grassland from start,
we moved Settler and Worker SE, where Seoul was founded. The Worker
moved on to road the Bonus Grassland and then the two Forests to the
north. It only then moved south again to mine the Bonus Grassland and
join Seoul as its work was done. We were just about to start building
Spearmen.

Seoul produced a Warrior for Military Police duty, some Wealth, a
Settler timed for growth to size 3, more Wealth at size 1 where
the Fish was worked and production thus low anyway, then six Spearmen
without a single shield overflow, which was achieved by playing around
with using the Forest and the Coast tiles for 3 or 5 spt production.

P'yongyang was founded on the roaded Forest tile 2N of Seoul the same
turn the Settler was produced. It had only Coast tiles to work and
thus produced and grew very slowly. It built a Warrior, some Wealth to
account for the extra two shields from working the Forest tile on
growth and then a Worker, which was immediately joined to Seoul, which
thus reached a population of 4 nine turns earlier than it would have
otherwise. We also kept some food in the box for later usage.

3950 BC Found Seoul
2950 BC Found P'yongyang​

We built Spearmen in order to save shields (at a rate of 5 for 20) for
later, when our knowledge allowed us to build more useful items. Our
science output was at this time around 13 bpt. After the Spearmen,
Seoul built a Settler timed to be ready for the turn when Map Making
was discovered. P'yongyang after the Worker produced some Wealth and
then a 40-shield Galley timed for the same turn. The idea was to
immediately send the Settler to the land visible in the east.

It can be noted that no unit support was payed for the eight units
built so far. On the next turn, we disbanded both Warriors in
P'yongyang towards a second Galley.

4000 BC Discover Bronze Working
3350 BC Discover Pottery
2550 BC Discover Alphabet
1870 BC Discover Writing
1275 BC Discover Map Making​

A disappointment, a relief

In 1275 BC we discovered Map Making, built a Galley by switching
production in the interturn, loaded a Settler and a Spearman and went
three tiles straight east, where the Spearman went ashore only to find
a small and useless desert island. To make sure, we then took the
Spearman onboard again, sailed south along the coast and landed the
Settler.

We all went back to our home island, exchanged the Spearman for a
Worker which was now ready in Seoul, and started looking for other
possibilities. Finally we sighted land in the north-west and sent two
Galleys in this direction: the scouting one with Worker and Settler
and another one from P'yongyang with two Spearmen. Three other
Spearmen had contributed 15 shields to this Galley. Through a wonder
both Galleys survived one turn at Sea and the units could all be
landed in a high-potential landscape.

Wonsan was founded where the Settler had landed next to a Cattle tile
upon which our Worker had landed. We now needed to boost this city in
order for it to win over P'yongyang when Seoul was abandoned. Seoul
was building two Workers after the second Settler and the following
Settler would then bring its population to zero and its Palace to
jump. A third Excel startup sheet was drawn for Wonsan.

1025 BC Found Wonsan​

Wonsan would need to have two national citizens and two military units
for it to recieve the Palace. 850 BC would be the first turn where
Wonsan had two citizens, and in the interturn to 825 BC Seoul would be
abandoned.


Catching up

In the mean time we met the Indians, who sold our contact to most
other tribes. After the Palace had move to Wonsan, the two Spearmen
went out to pop the two huts present on our somewhat larger little
island. We got a Warrior and Code of Laws. The contact with the Aztecs
we bought for good money.

975 BC Meet India
950 BC Meet Russia
950 BC Meet Japan
950 BC Meet China
950 BC Meet Arabia
950 BC Meet America
875 BC Meet Aztecs
825 BC Jump Palace to Wonsan
825 BC Abandon Seoul
350 BC Enter Middle Ages​

Catching up in science was quick, but it would take some time before
we could get our own research going again or threaten the other
tribes militarily.

950 BC Learn Ceremonial Burial
875 BC Discover Philosophy
875 BC Learn Warrior Code
875 BC Learn The Wheel
875 BC Learn Mysticism
875 BC Learn Mathematics
875 BC Learn Masonry
875 BC Learn Iron Working
875 BC Learn Horseback Riding
710 BC Learn Code of Laws
550 BC Learn Literature
350 BC Learn Polytheism
350 BC Learn Currency
350 BC Learn Construction
350 BC Discover Engineering
__10 BC Learn The Republic​

Wonsan immediately built a Granary and then one six-turn and three
five-turn Settlers. We managed to build four more cities under
Despotism and, importantly, connect Horses:

825 BC Found Pusan
390 BC Found Namp'o
310 BC Found Cheju
190 BC Found Hyangsan
_90 BC Found Ulsan
_30 BC Connect Horses​

The rest is history

In 10 BC we had wars, embassies and alliances, all under Anarchy. We
went on to invade India, which we had chosen for our second core and
then Japan. From Japan we could attack Beijing, where the Chinese had
built The Pyramids and The Great Wall. We built the Forbidden Palace
the hard way on the island and set up the cities to produce Horsemen
at 10 or 5 spt. We stopped research only after discovering
Chivalry. We connected and disconnected Iron using 18 Slaves and a
Warrior on a Mountain in former Japan. We captured The Colossus in
India and The Great Library in America. We used our first Great Leader
to rush a Palace in Delhi and the second to rush Leonardo's Workshop
which triggered our Golden Age, but that was very, very late in the
game. We captured Sun Tzu's Art of War, The Hanging Gardens and The
Great Lighthouse from the AI, too. Resistance varied from a single
Japanese Warrior to five or six brave Pikemen in other capitals.

_730 AD Destroy Japan
_910 AD Destroy China
_960 AD Emerge Great Leader Yi Song-gye
_980 AD Rush Palace in Delhi
1090 AD Destroy India
1100 AD Destroy America
1100 AD Destroy Arabia
1120 AD Emerge Great Leader Chu-Mong
1130 AD Rush Leonardo's Workshop in Damascus
1140 AD Enter Golden Age
1160 AD Destroy Russia
1180 AD Destroy Aztecs
1180 AD Emerge Great Leader in the very last fight, form Army​

Conquest victory in 1190 AD.

 

[milr]

Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink ...

Worker to forest confirmed the bad news. Land to right was likely also an island given our position on map, so built 2nd city to build Lighthouse, and pre-built 4 settlers and some vet spears while waiting for maps. 1st ship
looped the desert to right, and second ship peeked left a couple moves til Light dawned. Found land left and sent 1st ship scurrying that way also. After initial 4(+1) settlers got to new island, had time to explore south and
looped around even bigger island, and it had the makings of a good life. So work on FP on island left, build settlers on island left and swords (nice touch) on start island to shuttle to big island, all the while refusing to let the AIs
know what I was doing. Very late jumping palace because needed those swords, to protect the new island from invasion, keep the barbs under control on the big island, and escort settlers, and finally, a few more troops to occupy the palace-to-be so I could abandon/jump/rebuild.

Wine, wine, everywhere, but not a drop to sell ...

Was able to buy&trade for some techs, but falling behind while tech-racing to open trade routes across ocean. Peace helped, as did middle age tech bonus. Chose not to revolt when got Monarchy&Republic, as I feared the timeout would hurt my tech race too much, so just plodded along 'til I could trade & go democratic. When the big AI wars ensued, I was able to play tech catchup, prebuild for the ToE, and spring ahead of the AI's. Gambled on two big GPT-for-tech deals with AIs, and got away with it, they didn't double cross me. That really helped me, as did the Wall Street GA. With no enemies, I went for Diplomatic victory. Space might have been touch&go, especially if war came my way, and Domination seemed out of reach. In retrospect, had island left been the mainland, I likely would have lost my settlements in wars, and finished way behond the AIs.

 

[Chamnix]

Predator class, but not really in the Galley Challenge…

I decided a start like this deserved a ridiculous strategy, so I attempted a 20K game using our shield powerhouse of a capital. I founded Seoul on the initial starting location despite the lack of food at first figuring that I couldn’t afford to waste the shields from the hill.

My initial builds were Colossus, temple, and then the Great Library setting off what was probably the most pathetic Golden Age in history.

At one point, I founded one town on the southeastern island, but I never defended it, and eventually the Chinese took it. I did OK getting wonders, but the research was so slow, and building things took forever so it was a long time before I was sure I would even reach 20K before I suffered a humiliating histographic loss.

I finally reached 20K in 2031 after only 5 hours of play for a Jason score of 249 .

 

[Paul#42]

I finally reached 20K in 2031 after only 5 hours of play for a Jason score of 249 .

great! And guess what? I bet you'll get the award.

 

[klarius]

great! And guess what? I bet you'll get the award.

Well, no.
I had the same idea for this game (and not much time).
Finished a pure OCC 20k in 1982.
Lots of phony wars slowed the AI enough that I could snag Colossus, Glib, HG, Glight, Bach's, Shakespeare's and Newton's.

 

[megistatos]

This was a good quick millitary game(once things got going properly).

Playing Open meant I managed to keep up with the predator players despite some early problems. Pyongyang was settled circa 2850BC, but I made the mistake of building a barracks there- thinking it would produce lots of vet troops. It produced around four spears which really weren't necessary. On the plus side I decided to build a granary in Seoul(which no-one else has mentioned doing). Food was the limiting factor on settler production so with a granary Seoul could "churn out" settlers to be shipped NW(and I had three by the time mapping came).
Research was a bit poor. I should have gone for Pottery first(for an earlier granary) but went for Writing instead. Map Making came in 975BC (took 40 turns!) but I chose a harbour from a colossus prebuild in Pyongyang instead of a galley. Then, I wasted the next city on the desert island before finding the island NW of the start. I settled this new island as fast a possible, including 6 cities at rcp 3 from the new palace (jumped in 270BC). From here it was all history...
Cities built barracks then horsemen. A bit of trading put me equal in science with the AI. As soon as I felt I had the strength I sent a few galley loads of horses to alpha and attacked India(around 400AD). They were weaker than expected, with mostly 1(somtimes 0) spearman in the smaller cities. As soon as India were finished I moved on to Japan), getting a FP in Osaka from a GL in 640AD, then China. During the war against Russia I researched Chivalry, and though they had some pikes, I steadily upgraded my horses and they fell easily. Next I attacked Arabia and America, before turning my forces on the Aztecs. This war triggered my GA, through capturing wonders and a GL to rush Sun Tzu's, but far too late to help much. I also lost a few turns getting to their last city in the extreme north west of the continent, which they just weren't quite ready to give me in a peace treaty. I could have achieved domination earlier I think, but there's something nice about wiping out every trace of civilization from the planet.

Conquest victory in 1090AD
Firaxis:2420
Jason:8638
Time Played:a pleasant 13:22:05

My score seems pretty good considering that Chamnix and klarius both went for 20k and I was quicker than Piu Freddo or tR1cKy(though of course they play Predator!). I'd like to find out how PaperBeetle got on(and everyone else for that matter).

 

[Più Freddo]

My score seems pretty good considering that Chamnix and klarius both went for 20k and I was quicker than Piu Freddo or tR1cKy(though of course they play Predator!)

Your score is higher than mine, too. I think you can look forward to a very nice medal.

 

[PaperBeetle]

Conquest victory in 1090AD
Firaxis:2420
Jason:8638
Time Played:a pleasant 13:22:05

Zouch!

I did very poorly. I don't have any notes, but I'll see if I can do it from memory...
I too used a granary in Seoul. I figured that getting the second town out was actually of relatively low importance compared to keeping Seoul large, given that it would have much less beaker production on the road to Mapping (4bpt after corruption, once grown to pop 2?). I paid for the granary's upkeep by letting the second town build wealth.

After getting my first galley down to Beta, and losing my westbound galley, I was left to explore the Beta coastline in the hope that it was Alpha and/or the home of anybody else. This was not the case of course. I think I did manage to get a suicide galley to Gamma before my second town completed the Lighthouse, but by the time I met the other civs, they had long since learned Mapping and Literature, so I had no trade tech until Republic came through. I didn't get settlers to Gamma until after the Lighthouse (the first town on Gamma was Indian iirc), so research was agonisingly slow. I think I reached the medieval somewhen between 250ad and 500ad.

Now by this point I still wasn't really sure what my goal was, which fact is pretty well guaranteed to produce a weak result. I was considering whether I should have one core on Beta and one on Gamma, and was I shooting for a science win or military? Of course, I eventually jumped my palace to Beta, and started fighting on Alpha. The Japanese were getting dogpiled as a result of my alliance-forming games, so I picked up their junk towns in the northern peninsula, and used my first leader to put an FP in there too.
After Japan were gone, I moved on to India. This must have been after 1000ad already, as India had a luxury, and I remember that I didn't get a luxury hooked to my Gamma palace until the 13th century ad - and even that was wines from Beta (I had researched as far as Navigation while I was planning to actually use that continent). Up until that point I had been living off war happiness from three or four different sources.

Okay, next research goal was cavalry. By now I was thoroughly fed up with this game and just wanted everyone dead. And having reached cavs, I decided to go on to the industrial for railroads. Frankly, at this level, research just seemed so cheap that I thought I might as well keep going forwards! Soon enough I was in a Newton-inspired golden age, and then I went industrial. My free tech wasn't Steam, but it wasn't much trouble to research, and then I finally stopped research. By now the date must have been about 1330ad.

Out on the battlefield, I moved in a broadly anticlockwise sweep around Alpha. The AI were pretty solid by this late date; China was researching strongly, and actually managed to get themselves as far as Nationalism. I saw two rifles (one a draft) but they weren't about to put me off. Cath got to the industrial too, but drew Medicine, so there were no more rifles. Throughout the game the Aztecs had been the big power, and by the time I reached the northern tip of their peninsula, they still had a higher pre-win Firaxis than me. I put an end to their misery (and my own) in 1530ad, for a 1535ad conquest. 1570 Firaxis points earned me 6136 Jasons. My worst game in a long time.

 

[tR1cKy]

Well, my game progression was pretty similar to PF's one. Made it to the NW island, settled there, then jumped the capital.

Middle Ages were reached in 90 BC through trading. I got Monotheism with the scientific bonus and Feudalism from Russia, then researched indisturbed Chivalry with a lone specialist.

The Forbidden Palace was built from scratch in the central city, then after the assimilation of India the capital was jumped again in Delhi, by abandoning the old one. After the conquest of Japan i had finally a source of iron and knights were available.

And now the bad news. With Delhi i captured the Great Library, so a golden age was not too far away, at least theoretically. I started the Colossus on a coastal city near the FP, but was beaten by the Aztecs for 4 turns. Turned to Great Lighthouse... and i was beaten again, by the Chinese, for 6 turns grr...

At this point i had to revamp research. Got Education and Astronomy, turned to Copernicus and finally completed it in the late game. I continued to Navigation, the idea was to ship knights from the FP core to the northern Aztec tip... but i completely forgot this plan and when i made up my mind again it was simply too late to take advantage of it. A stupid mistake that probably costed me the conquest award... well, it happens sometimes

The final result was a conquest in 1110 AD with 2444 Firaxis and 8684 Jasons. I see now that the higher score is mine, for a tight margin... unless someone did better, of course.

 

[megistatos]

Ahh tR1cKy, you beat me by just 56 points- your extra 24 Firaxis points were enough to make up for the two turns difference. Anyway I don't mind sharing: you can have the gold and I'll have fastest conquest

The Northern Aztec tip cost a few turns too. I was lucky- the Russians had founded a city near the tip which I got in a peace treaty, so I could rush a few longbows in there to capture the last Aztec city at the very top. My mistake was assuming they'd give it to me in a peace treaty, so I didn't rush the longbows early enough to coincide with capturing their other remaining cities.

 

[Marsden]

Hi, my name is Marsden and I lost on Warlord. Wait this is the wrong room, I thought this was the support group.

 

[Smirk]

Won in the mid 1800s by 100k. What a toil that was, first time I ever finished a 100k, and only the second time I attempted it. First time was on Diety way back in the early days of gotm (20-30s?), which unlike this time the AI also had a gazillion cities.

This was a pretty odd game for me, never have I been so far behind at the same time playing a weak AI. Things I've never had to deal with before. Longbows are crazy powerful. Is it possible that the modification to give the a def shot changed their main power? I routinely saw them take out my cavalry with ease and even infantry.

All in all it was fairly uninteresting, the lack of resources, both luxury and strategic put a damper on any interesting diplomatic developments. Needless to say by the time I could start to conquer for some of these things pretty much everyone hated me. I was able to get to tech parity with my age tech but had little else by way of trade for most of the game.

My end date was set back a little by a surprise attack from the Russians where they took a few cities for a couple turns. I had over 100gpt from them and 5 or more resources in trade so I have no idea what sparked the sneak attack. I also had half a hundred infantry running around as sheild storage so I systematically pillaged every single Russian square. I couldn't do much conquest with these units, infantry vs infantry is, I guess, historically accurate.


As an aside and since I don't know where else to say this. While checking out the awards (fast finish) I noticed the awards are not listed for the early gotms (I didn't check for how long). Is this intentional? The text description seems to suggest they are for all of history and not for some subsection.

 

[Lanzelot]

It looks like everyone had his/her own very special experiences with this particular GOTM... For me it was special as well: my first palace jump ever and my first Diplomatic win ever. And the first time ever I had a higher Jason score than klarius, even though when submitting the game I thought that my game would be the worst of them all: my pre-win Fireaxis score at 1866 (half-way into the Modern Age) was a whooping 450 points!!
(civ_steve, you see, even though almost everybody has been scolding you for this particular game, it was good for something... For me it turned into an unforgettable experience that now in retrospecive I would not have wanted to miss! My one-time chance to beat masters like klarius, Chamnix and Marsden. Thanks a lot!)

I won't go into any boring details this time, because I really don't think that anything can be learned from the way I conducted this game... Here's just a general overview of the events after my post in the previous spoiler.

As indicated, after I had setup two nice cores on Beta and Gamma and had done a bit of infrastructure development, my own research started to take off. A bit more of tech trading, and I think sometime
around 1500 or 1600 (sometime at the beginning of the Industrial Age) I caught up with the most advanved AIs. For a very long time I had been undecided about which victory condition I should aim for. When I caught up with them I tended towards domination or spaceship. Therefore I stopped trading techs with them and just flew passed them at a rate of 5-6 turns per tech, sometimes even 4. Occasionally I sold an outdated tech for luxuries, trying to help my score a bit with happy people. And once I used the Emsworth trick to get an income of 1400gpt for a while. This boosted two of my rivals from the Middle Age to the Industrial Age, at a time when I was already beginning the Modern Age...

Anyway, when I had enough tanks I finally decided the time had come to shift into "domination mode". That must have been around 1810. Everyone else was still at infantry and cavalry. The first victim was India, which was closest and had a couple of wonders I liked... In the end the AIs turned out to be quite weak. In the beginning they put up a bit of resistance taking out quite a few tanks with their cavalry, but after their original units were gone, they just weren't able to produce any replacements on time, and then it was like a hot knife going through butter. India was gone around 1840, and then I spent a couple of turns consolidating and upgrading to Modern Armor.

The next victim was going to be China. As they were by far the strongest AI, having conquered large parts of Russia, Arabia and Japan, I made a MPP with the other two remaining civs, America and Atztekia. I didn't want to bother about protecting my newly captured cities against a sneak attack from one of these two. (This point is important, because in a moment it'll explain, how I won by a victory condition that I had not even remotely considered during the entire game right up to the last round... I should also mention here, that I still had my research going, even though I already knew Modern Armor and Stealth Bombers and was going for domination. The reasons for this were: firstly I didn't need the money at that point, as my Emsworth money was still paying for the temples, granaries and market places necessary for maximizing the score, and secondly I was still trying to do something for my lousy score by aiming for a couple of future techs...)

So the war against China was going quite well. At one point I had another military leader, and as I had already used earlier leaders for Longevity and Cure for Cancer (you see: I was grasping at every straw to get a larger and happier population to raise my score...) and had build the Internet by hand (trying to boost research to get to the future techs...) I was wondering what to do with that leader. Then a thought struck me: I knew that China was still the second largest nation, so it would be my rival in a UN election. And the other two, America and Atztekia, where quite happy with me and at war with China... Also it was already getting late (1:30 in the night) and it might still be 2 or 3 hours before I had finally gathered the remaining 550 tiles and 66% population to reach domination. (And my little 2-year-old daughter would certainly get up at 7:00 am next morning...) So I thought, ok, let's build the UN and risk an election. Then the game will finally be over, the score is bad beyond hope anyway, so I can as well submit it the way it is and at least get some sleep tonight... And thus it came to pass in 1866, that I won my first diplomatic victory ever...

If I think about it, the reasons for this victory had been the following:

[*] I was tired and wanted to go to bed
[*] two other nations were happy with me, because I had ripped off their money with a couple of sneaky deals and had given them a MPP so I would be able to finish them off separately
[*] and I didn't quite know what to do with the military leader that just had emerged...

I don't think, any game has ever been won for similar reasons...!

BTY: I'm again much astonished by the Jason scoring system... My after-victory score had been ~900 Fireaxis, so this being Warlord and already quite late in time I didn't expect tor get more than a couple hundred Jason points for it. But I got 3500?!

Più Freddo, I really liked your write-up! Clear style, precise facts and well-written. Looks like you, megistatos and tR1cKy found kind of the correct way to play this starting position.

To answer your question, civ_steve: personally I prefer the higher difficulty levels. I know that maximizing your score at Warlord is probably as difficult as winning a game at Deity and that a true master of the game should be proficient in both, but for me it's more fun to have a tough uphill struggle against AIs that really put up a fight! (Ok, in the beginning this game had been a tough uphill struggle as well, but once the human player managed to setup a core on Beta or Gamma, it was only a matter of time untill he had caught up with the AI, and then he could virtually win any way he liked. Even with no coherent strategy at all... ) So my vote goes for Emperor games or above, and if there's going to be the occasional Warlord game, then please give us a decent starting position as well, so we (the human contenders) will all fight on even terms.

For now I will try to switch over to the COTM track. There are still 13 days left, and I really look forward to the promised Sid game over Christmas...! (Christmas and New Year are located perfectly this year, giving me a total of 16 days vacation... )