GOTM83 - Final Spoiler

[civ_steve]

GOTM 83 Final Spoiler - Game Submitted

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Deity is usually a game of constantly catching up to the AI until you finally feel you have gotten ahead and have some control of the game. When did you feel that, or did that never happen? And how did the game finally finish?

 

[TxCraig]

I am guessing mobilization is disabled in all the xOTMs?

Russia got Copernicus and Newton and Darwin and ran away with it. I tried going to war with them in the 1600s, taking out their coal and rubber, getting MA with all the other civs, but the AIs signed peace treaties after like 8 turns, and pretty soon Russia had Refining etc. Make it stop.

I really like the berzerks, but I wasn't able to use them effectively. Sure, they could capture a city, but they couldn't hold it. By the time I had enough defensive units to support them, they were up against infantry.

I managed to take a rep hit--twice--and I have no clue how/why. I have read all the articles, I checked the active deals . . . no clue. The first was probably MPP-related, but the second . . . no clue. Also this was the first and last time I went to communism.

Toward the end, Russia was attacking Japan, sending scads of modern armor across Mongol territory without bothering with a ROP. The Mongol infantry and cavalry could only watch.

A good time was had by all.

 

[Sima Qian]

This game, I have added Ragnar Lodbrok to the proud Nordic tradition of UN Secretary-Generals.

I fell somewhat behind in tech during the middle ages due to missing out on GLib, but managed to make up the difference by buying tech in a GPT alliance with Japan against England. Japan signed peace within a few turns. I let England stick a couple of units within my territory before offering GPT for peace + chemistry, then getting out of the deal by demanding that they leave or declare war.

Spain got very strong by wiping France off the continent, and Russia did the same to Japan, but the two of them were at war for pretty much the entire industrial age, so research was quite slow for a deity level game.

Since I had razed two English cities early on, I was sure Elizabeth would vote against me, so I took the extra step of getting her eliminated by an AI dogpile before the UN was built.

Russia was a couple of turns ahead of me in researching fission, but the silly AI decided to try to build the UN in Edo (???!!). Spain came pretty close to beating me to the UN, but several thousand gold was well-spent on sabotage. Eventually, Catherine sealed her own fate by declaring war on Abu just a few turns before elections.

This was a difficult game for me, it took about twice as long as my last GOTM submission. No doubt in part due to the AI building more units on higher difficulty, causing the turns to take longer to process. Also, Russia was the only sci civ. They got computers for the free tech, way back in 1550 AD, but they seemed to deliberately avoid researching fission - I was surprised that the AI would put such a low priority on getting the UN.

Entry class: Predator
Game status: Diplomatic Victory for Scandinavia
Game date: 1784 AD
Firaxis score: 1944
Jason score: 3340
Time played: 05:03:12

 

[LTJG Perry]

Took a beating from runaway Spain in the Middle Ages and gave it up. Who would want the details of that disaster?

I'm only posting because I wonder if Spain was so nasty in other games.

 

[greatbeyond]

Sima Qian, is your picture right that you only had two cities at the end, played Predator, and got a Diplo win, while managing to keep up in tech with two cities. That is certainly worth a detailed narrative!

We'll I would have come in third if I hadn't thrown in the towel. Spain shot out of the starting blocks and never looked back. Their only competition was Russia. I did get to capture the GL from England and caught up in techs for awhile (got me to Sci Method/Industrialism/Communism), but my tech pace was abysmal. Even at 100% it was no quicker than running a lone scientist. After I switched from Monarchy (most of the game) to Democracy, things got better but Russia was already in the MA and I was just finishing The Corp and Electronics. Spain was a little further behind Russia. France had one city and I had already helped (I'm being generous about my part) eliminate England, Mongolia, and Arabia. Of course I knew that the AI would be looking for a victim, so I tried to sign a MPP with Spain who refused. She was the logical choice because she was right next door and we had a long history of cooperation. All that changed near the end, she got annoyed for no reason and wouldn't deal with me. So I signed with Russia and hoped that would deter Spain from attacking. It did for about two turns when Cathi attacked and Spain responded, causing me to declare against Spain. Spain had more military than the population of my cities and my military combined. I knew I could probably get peace after a while but I would end up with just a few crappy cities and it wasn't worth the time to play the game out.
I made some early mistakes and happiness was a PITA. I thought we would be able to sell some Luxuries for Gold, but it appears the world didn't need what we had. It might be worth a replay and try to cut Spain off at the knees, she had so many mountains, hills, and Jungle that I didn't think she would get as strong as she did.

The other AIs all were running Communism, which I find funny because I have never gotten any kind of sense that Communism was that beneficial.

I tried to steal techs one time and got busted with Mongols DOW, It took too long to get enough money to steal from anyone else.

 

[templar_x]

unfortunately time doesn´t permit me to finish this game. things are looking relatively good in 430AD, though, for what i can relate from the pictures given above. current score still only 947. my goal had been conquest.

Spain: practically defeated, only a few cities left in the very north and east of the continent.
France: holds the GLib in Paris, only 3 tiles away from where i assemble my invasion force at the moment. showed a cav last turn, so i think it´s the right time to attack within the next dozen of turns. i kept a leader in reserve and a few settlers to immediately build a second core on former French lands.

my intention was to take control of my continent very soon, then a fast conquest of the English island, as the English are very weak, after that invasion of the other continent starting from the SE / Japan. i am pretty sure i could pull this off, but my time available for playing is nearly nonexisting at the moment.

i was very sceptical about zerks until recently but have to say they have been of big use in this game so far. their high attack made them very valuable against Spain, especially for the hill towns, together with arty and combined arms/pikes, then muskets. they were worth their 70 shield, what i had doubted until now.
invasion against France is prepared with a stack of zerks on boats in the south - i had taken all the seaside towns from Spain there already this way. another stack with arty and army cover gathers to march to Paris and take the GLib, hopefully boosting me up the IA or at least close.

with the combined arms approach, zerks should suffice even against an enemy with cavs and rifles; probably not with inf. it´s a real pity i cannot proceed, but hopefully read other interesting reports of conquest victories here.

 

[templar_x]

@ greatbeyond - as far as i can see Sima Quian did the job with only ONE city.

 

[greatbeyond]

@ greatbeyond - as far as i can see Sima Quian did the job with only ONE city.

Now that's just sick!!!

 

[Megalou]

Gah! Huzza! Bla-bla! Yeah!

I don't know which is the proper interjection. I submitted my 20K attempt with "less than an hour" to spare. I played the last 61 turns in one hour, losing 28 cities to Russia, but came out on top of things in 1776.

My drawn-out war with France in the Middle Ages made it nearly impossible to touch the Russians. I wanted to draw them into wars to slow their tech pace, so in joint ventures we obliterated Mongols and Arabia. (We got a leader for Hoover Dam but utter leader draught after that.) England I took care of myself. Then there were only three nations left, Scandinavia, Russia and Japan.

I then took control of all the many Japanese acquisitions outside their own continent. Russia was allied, of course, but I used the bottleneck in northern Japan to stop the flow of Russian troops into Japan. Otherwise the Russians would have crushed Japan in a matter of decades. I found it important to keep a third nation alive to divert the Russian war hunger for the many turns that remained.

This worked pretty well. As a matter of fact I started the war on Japan a bit prematurely because I saw something that looked like a small Russian stack of doom (five or six units) approaching one of our Mongolian colonies. Then, when I declared on Japan and allied Russia, this stack disappeared.

But then came those last 61 turns. I certainly had no time to watch out for any new stacks of doom lining up, and I didn't have time to be at war with Japan either. So, when the Russians attacked I had to revolt to Monarchy to avoid a total collapse of morale, and pretty soon Russia had destroyed Japan and taken over all our colonies on their continent, and some others. The anarchy should have been avoided, but it would have taken too long to stop the disorder in enough cities. It cost me the UN and five turns of culture.

In the year 1510 AD I had 1409 domination tiles.
At the end I had 1246 domination tiles. The number of cities went from 111 to 83.

The final culture count was 124 cpt, with 1 turn left of The Internet.
Our overall tech pace was slow. On a lower difficulty, we would probably have gotten Longevity and Cure for cancer too. Here, I was a bit worried that the Russians would start their space ship, and so didn't make all the tech deals I could have done.

 

[Megalou]

Oh, I forgot to mention the disaster that took place at the beginning of the industrial period. As I was saying in Spoiler 2, I prepared a palace flip to Paris. I only joined so many workers to Paris, and only put so much military in Paris, as was necessary to make Paris the number 1 palace flip city in the utility program Civ Assist. Somewhat surprised, I noted that catapults counted towards raising a city's rating in Civ assist.

So, with the rating of 53 for Paris and 51 for Bjoergvin, I abandoned Nidaros. The palace flipped to Bjoergvin! I then had to use a leader that I had stashed away to hurry the palace in Bjoergvin, improving science with about one third, initially.

Whether the 2 or 3 culture points Bjoergvin earned as a capital shaved off any turns, I haven't bothered to check.

@Sima. Nice game. Was it a real OCC? You know, there is a deity OCC among the spotlight game on the GOTM homepage by a guy called Charis.