GOTM99 - First Spoiler

[civ_steve]

GOTM 99 - First spoiler, the Ancient Age

Reading Requirements:

1. Must be able to research a Middle Ages Technology.

Posting restrictions

1. Feel free to discuss distant contacts and trades, but be discreet about locations or directions of any AI.
2. No discussion of middle-ages (or later) including resource locations.
3. AS ALWAYS, do not post Spoiler information for ANY other 'X'OTM contest.

I trust you weren't too disappointed with the general starting location! Where did you found and why? There's a good amount of space around you - how did you decide to use this space? How did early contacts go? What are your plans entering the MA and are the AI giving you any challenge?

 

[templar_x]

going predator.

i settled in place. really sweet lands around, i decided for a rcp 3-ring, although rcp 4 would have been possible, too. did not do enough exploration to know this for sure, though, and rcp 3 left lots of mm-possibilities.

build order was scout-granary-settler-worker-settler-barracks-settlers, combo factory from 2350bc on
i can see even more food when borders expand just too good to be true!
as for research: as i am going predator, i start with Pottery and trade 4 turns early when i meet Egypt in 3550bc. then start a min run on Alpha.
3100 meet Persia, trade
2900 found 2nd town 2N
2550 found 3rd town 3 SW, have a riot due to carelessness
2150 found 4th town 2S
1990 found 5th town 2W
1790 6th town 2E, min on Alpha finished, trade for IW,TW and HR, all ressources available in abundance
1660 first lux connected, my worker factory is up and running
1525 everyone has Writing 1 turn before me
Persia starts very strong, and conquers most of Egypt
research is awfully slow overall and mostly self done

the really strange thing is, we have barbs on and i did not see a single hut?!?? civ_steve, may i assume you removed all the closeby huts for the human player?

QCS 1000bc:
13 towns
40 citizens
1 settler, 20 worker, 2 slaves
21 warriors (mostly vets), 1varcher, 1vspear, 2 vhorses, 1 galley
10 turns to Republic
contact with Egypt, Persia, Mongols

as you can see, i am in full preparation for a mass upgrade and beginning conquest of the starting continent. galleys in preparation to find the route to the other continent for either fast domination or conquest, preferably the latter.

first war to be fought with slow movers, then i intend to change for mounted units for the rest of the game.

templar_x

 

[yuris125]

Well, the Emperor level is giving me troubles... had an early war with Mongols who brought about 10 archers before I was ready... they razed 2 my towns before I managed to build a few horses and drive them off. Then started a war with Egypt, and as it turned out I had not enough military for it. I would still say I'm doing ok, being the leader in tech and score. Unfortunately, there's a lot of real life stuff going on at the moment, and I'm not sure I'll be able to finish this game. But I'll try

 

[Megalou]

Templar_x, you rogue, that's a weird spoiler ending with the QSC. I'm half disappointed.
Great stats though. Looks like your combo factory and MM paid off. But why the min research on alphabet? Were you saving for upgrades already?

Predator.
Settled in place,
researching Pottery, on the principle that the less advanced we are, the cheaper the tech should be. Alphabet would take too long.

MECCA BUILDS
scout,war,settl,granary(2710BC), settler, worker,settlers

POPS
map,war,war,BW,Currency,map.

RCP
4 (12% corruption/waste in republic) and 7 (52% corruption/waste in republic.)

SELF-RESEARCHED
3400 - Pottery
2510 - Alphabet
1790 - Writing
xxxx - Philosophy
1350 - CoL
900 - Republic. Then slow on literature, hoping to get poly from enemies.
710 - Literature. Ready to pop two huts.
690 - Currency (popped.)
590 - Polytheism. Middle Ages. Got Engineering from Ottomans and Feudalism from Persia. Kept Monopoly on Lit.
I also half-researched Construction before finding the Vikings and Germans.

CONTACTS
3300 - Egypt came knocking. Sold pottery for 35 gold.
2590 - Found Mongols, way south beyond the large lake. Traded WC for CB.
2430 - Found Persia. Sold CB for 31 gold.
670 - Germany. IT: Vikings.
650 - Ottomans, French.

CITIES
3100 - Medina.
2390 - Damascus.
2070 - Baghdad.
1830 - Najran.
1700 - Kufah.
1600 - Basra (horses.)
1475 - Khurasan.

OTHER THINGS
2630 - First barbs spotted, near Mecca.
1910 - Traded The Wheel.
1830 - Connected ivory.
1650 - Sold off Writing to all neighbours. Messed up factory.
1450 - First barracks built.
1425 - Connected horses.
Towns are divided into: Settler factory(1), worker factory (1), military (2), military/galley builders (4).
1350 - Egypt demanded philosophy. We gave in.
Hurried temple in Mecca - way too late.
1250 - Traded Map Making (2 civs.)
1150 - Founded furs town.
1000 BC - QSC: 11 towns, 1 settler, 14 workers, 1 scout, 10 warriors, 3 horsemen, 4 galleys. Three temples, one barracks maybe two.
975 - Bought Math from Mongols before popping. Then decided to wait for Republic(4t) before popping anyway, and located another hut.
950 - sent 2 suicide galleys. One survived for two turns but would have needed three. Connected iron.
670 - Found the beta continent. Declared on Egypt (sloppy planning but OK) upgrading about 8-10 warriors and continuing to build mainly horsemen (and a couple of libraries.)
650 - Trades: Construction, all contacts, 417 gold.

I started off playing carefully, which is why I'm impressed by Templar_x's stats. But then I played a bit faster, anxious to have a tussle with Egypt.

 

[templar_x]

sorry for the weird spoiler... i must have been a bit when i posted it

here´s the rest of the AA:

730 connect 2nd lux
670 Mongols build Pyramids
650 i finally see the first hut in this game! on an island. then i feel i get bad luck, as Persia researches Construction and finishes GW through the cascade instead of wasting the shields invested in the Pyramids! they did not have construction before, and i hate my neighbours to always build the Wall :argh:
610 get first MGL... TGLighthouse i guess. see first immortal. destroy Egypt.
570 game crashes for no apparent reason? get the autosave and do the same moves again (which were aweful battle results, i can tell you)
530 rush Lighthouse
still having bad luck with my suicide galleys...
450 take Persepolis with GW, only 3 defenders, no losses
410 Mongols destroy last Persian town
390 research Poly and enter MA

can you believe it, still no galley made it through until here.

i´m very interested to see how your *much* faster tech advancement affects the results (not the final results though, as you´ll find that i faced ... other ... issues later in my game). in my game, i could muster more population and thus more production with my strategy and left the AIs dumb. keen to know what turns out better.

my start felt really good, and although i initially had liked to go rcp4 i believe rcp3 was stronger since it was so much faster to set up.

don´t know my reasoning behind the min on Alpha any more. kinda believe i rather bought a worker than invest the beakers in own early research and forgot to mention it. not sure about that though. i built the whole set of 8 1st ring towns, haven´t done this for a very long time.

see you again in spoiler #2, good luck for your game. great you found the time to play (with a little morale support). i think being "slightly retired" (edit: now i see it´s now "retired") you´re still one of the most active players around.

templar_x

 

[Megalou]

*much* faster research? Yes, perhaps, because I spent 7 turns on literature as well. But that evens out because of my popping of currency, a tech that no one researched until it was time to gift the scientific civs into the MA. Your military exploits seem to be highly successful, though I wonder what became of your FP. Would it have been a good idea to rush FP instead of GL? Or have you organized your core well enough for a palace flip - I know I have not.

But I suppose the biggest factor here is your apparent concentration on foot soldiers like swordsmen and probably MIs, as opposed to my focus on horsemen and anticipation of ansar warriors, what you called my focus on research. Ansar warriors are not stronger than MIs and on a continents map your choice may well be better.

Yes, I found some time that did not really exist Not sure that I'll have time to finish though.

/Mr Senior
PS: My population in 1000 BC was 35. Comparing this with your population of 40 and my 14 workers with your 20, you certainly seem to have done well. Three of my towns were building workers in 1000 BC and only one was building settlers so far. Corrupt towns will build more settlers but they will need aid from workers to chop forests, so there is a clear demand for workers.

As for the RCP choice, I haven't delved very deeply into your combo factories and sharing of foods at RCP3 (although of course I divide food between cities if there is a surplus.) I do think that RCP is more aesthetic here and probably allows for more powerful cities and perhaps more coastal tiles. Perhaps the latter factor is a reason why I found the distant civs earlier than you. Another plausible reason is luck.

PPS: Did you ever consider setting up your towns so that Thebes could be reached by galleys going through the five lakes? I did, but decided against it since it would have messed up RCP7 and since Egypt didn't seem very strong. At deity or with a bad starting position it could have been different.

 

[templar_x]

military exploits? which military exploits?

what i, in an ex post view, liked better about rcp 3 was that more tiles were worked earlier and therefore commerce was good. i felt money was much more important than shields, as most of the shields had to get "rushed" via upgrades anyways (first warrior-swords, then horses-keshiks).

i really love your 5-lakes-assault-idea. very imaginative for an old man i noticed there were extraordinarily many lakes on the map but did not deduct any strategic possibilities from it. plus, my suicide galleys lived up to their name and all died, so i had none to spare from their search for the other continent.

the FP topic is covered in my next spoiler info... just saying this, i am still crying over it.

templar_x

 

[Megalou]

military exploits? which military exploits?

Er, just those early military exploits that will probably decide the game in your favour, nothing else.

I wasn't talking about any dastardly game exploits, just good old fashioned success on the battlefield.

 

[templar_x]

since we agreed to go dastardly this game, i even thought hard to come up with any such strategies. i feel really disappointed now that you don´t concede i used any of those...

if it´s just about the sword upgrades, uhmmm, i really dunno why so many vet warriors gathered in my empire... really!

templar_x

 

[Megalou]

Even by your own rules, the sword upgrades are not very dastardly at all. The iron resources are so far from Mecca that you can't possibly be expected to connect any of them before 1000 BC. As I recall you are not against upgrades as such, right?

 

[templar_x]

Even by your own rules, the sword upgrades are not very dastardly at all. The iron resources are so far from Mecca that you can't possibly be expected to connect any of them before 1000 BC. As I recall you are not against upgrades as such, right?

no, upgrades are absolutely fine, especially if they are a balance for my strategic shortcomings in comparison to your game.

i just don´t know which other early military exploit you could have spoken about. from my usual ruleset i obviously know too few...

templar_x

 

[Megalou]

You misunderstand the word exploit. It can mean 1) what the western world did with it's colonies, i.e. "going very far in taking advantage of something", e.g. the game rules of Civilization but also in a more basic sense 2) great accomplishments, eg "military exploits." I was thinking only of the latter sense but it's pretty funny how it happened to coincide with our pregame discussion on the use of exploits! So what I meant was that you seemed to take control of your continent early in the game and skillfully, maybe even before meeting pikemen, and this may well decide the game in comparison with my strategic shortcomings.

 

[templar_x]

got it.

after our pregame discussion, i indeed only had the "colonialistic" exploit in my mind.

templar_x

 

[Lanzelot]

Ok, I finally qualify for the first spoiler. As a matter of fact I had started this game quite early for my standards, right when I downloaded the .sav in the middle of January. But after I played the first session, I had to put the game aside for lack of time and took it up again only last weekend.

As most of the Acient Age is already so long ago, I don't remember much of it. The usual settler factory, the usual research, the usual early wars with horsemen while bee-lining for Ansars.

There's only one interesting twist I would like to share with you:
I had an early war with Egypt using a dozen horsemen or so, and this time for once I was exceptionally lucky and got an early leader! Now the dilemma started: what do I do with it? On one hand side I finally wanted a game, where I get my second core up and running before the end of the game... So keeping it for rushing the FP in my planned second core location (Thebes) seemed an obvious choice. On the other hand by that time my galleys had already pretty much surrounded our continent and it seemed obvious that we were isolated from the other continent(s) by a thick stretch of ocean, so the Great Lighthouse seemed desirable.

F7 told me there are currently 3 towns/cities working on the Great Lighthouse:

• a small Mongolian town, which didn't look too promising...
• Nidaros, the Viking capital, which was shown in the top 5 as a size 8 city that had already built the Oracle and Great Library, so was probably a powerful productive city
• Thebes, which was mainly floodplain and did not seem to be as productive as Nidaros

Thebes had started the Lighthouse a bit earlier than Nidaros, because Nidaros first finished the GLib. But still there was a risk that the Nidaros-powerhouse would beat Thebes, and I didn't want the Lighthouse standing on the other continent.

So here I had three options and pondered very long about them, even dreamed about them in the night:

1. Rush the Lighthouse with the leader to be on the save side, and then setting up the second core via a laborious palace jump
2. Just forget about the Lighthouse, take Thebes right away and set up the second core without delay
3. Delay the taking of Thebes, hope they'll finish the Lighthouse soon and then use the leader for rushing the FP

I did not want to make peace with Egypt and check via embassy how far they are, because: a) it was giving war happiness and b) the 20 turn delay would throw me back too far. (I intended to keep my peace reputation clean so I can later get many size-1 towns in peace deals and don't need to loose time riding through the jungle to get them.)

In this situation I finally had an inspiration: I noticed an Egyptian chariot, and I had a red-lined horseman closeby... This would allow me to take a "controlled risk". I placed the red-lined horseman right in front of the chariot, this would trigger their Golden Age and hopefully allow them to beat Nidaros!

And the plan worked perfectly! I bypassed Thebes and continued capturing cities to the south of it, so didn't loose too much time in the setup of my second core, and only 3-4 turns later Thebes finished the Lighthouse, my horses took it the next turn and the leader immediately rushed the FP...!

I wonder: has anyone ever done this before: voluntarily triggering an enemy's Golden Age while being at war with them?

Ok, templar_x already got me very curios about what his "... other ... issues" are. (He also mentioned them in the GOTM100 pre-game discussion.) Unfortunately it looks like I'll need the full distance again to finish this game (keep your fingers crossed that I'll make the deadline...), so I won't find out before Saturday.

But I already have a suspicion: when one of my suicide galleys finally made the voyage to Beta and I traded all world maps, I noticed a one-tile island with an Ottoman town on it... I hope that island doesn't have a resource!! (I think, even if it's a not-yet-discovered resource like Aluminium or Uranium, the AI won't give up that town in a peace deal, no matter what... is that right?)

Lanzelot

 

[PaperBeetle]

I wonder: has anyone ever done this before: voluntarily triggering an enemies Golden Age while being at war with them?

I did this only last night actually! Still waiting to see if it will pay off...

 

[Megalou]

"I wonder: has anyone ever done this before: voluntarily triggering an enemies Golden Age while being at war with them?"

Yes, but not nearly as successfully as here. I try to get some information on the wonders when I build embassies, but in reality, the more I try to predict who will get a wonder, the more wrong I will be. For example, if I were to predict that Norway would build the Great Oil Rig, The Kap Verde Islands would get it. If I were to predict that Chile would build Mount Rushmore, Denmark would get it. And so on. Regardless of Golden Ages.

 

[Lanzelot]

Oh well, I thought I had hit upon a new idea, as I had never read anything similar in the forums and strategy articles. But I guess it was just too obvious...