My GOTM, Part 1

[Armageddon]

Hi All -

This is my first post ever - yahoo! I was quite excited to find this site just recently while looking for civ 3 info. What a find! Too bad I didn't find it earlier!

I just finished my first GOTM. I hadn't been to the message boards when I first started, and I've fancied myself a good civ player.

I got off to (what I thought) was about as good a start as I've ever had. I got gold and a horseman from the two huts, then found two tribes in my next too huts. I found Rome quickly and in a hut that was sitting right next to rome I found archers - this allowed me to eliminate the Romans (if I remember right) at 2900 bc.

(continued)

 

[Armageddon]

I quickly (for me) started expanding my empire. Meanwhile I horseman scout found the Egyptians and the Carthanians, and spoted a viking warrior even thought I didn't make contact. As I uncovered the map, it became clear that the world was looking like split into two continents with an easily defendable isthmus between them. I found this odd because of the archipeligo setting, but so it goes.


So it was somewhere I guess around 600-700 bc that decided to go and take a look through some of the past scores and messages for other GOTMs.

 

[Armageddon]

While I thought my 15 or so cities with a defendable position was a very promising start, you can imagine my suprise as I read about players having 30, 40, or even 50 cities running by 1 ad!

Gads! I thought. I'm screwed! I read with interest some of the strategies of super-cities and feeder-cities. While I had adopted a strategy similar to this (build lots of cities, have a few main science, wonder, etc cities), I had not taken it nearly to the efficient level (as you'll see from my saved games) that I'd read about.

Since it was clear that I was in well over my head in terms of strategy, I thought that I might at least take a crack at military conquest (I had been planning on spaceship all along since I THOUGHT I had lots of cities and such a good map position .

 

[Armageddon]

Because I was planning on space ship, I had made a b-line for monotheism so that I could get the chapel/cathedral wonders to keep my people happy. Now that I'd shifted strategies, this left me with a bit of a dilema since I had not done any military research (other than trading with civs and misc pickups), but monotheism gave me Crusaders--a unit which I have probably only produed a dozen of ever in my civ games.

So what heck, I decided to go balls to the wall, and hence my game that I affectionately call "The Crusades" began.

My strategy was simple at this point. Get barracks in all my cities, and produce crusaders in all my cities. That's it. I had lots of settlers out and about getting ready to make new cities, but my new war-effort required that I call them to the front! All my settlers were set to the task of building roads to the enemy, such that my reinforcements could flow in quickly.

 

[Armageddon]

And, to tell you the truth, not only did this work, but it turned out to be a rather amusing and fun game to boot. The total lack of defense made attacking cities a bit interesting, but I did not have knights and so my defending units (archers at the time, and I picked up pikemen later in the game from city conquest) were too slow to be effective. So I would have large groups of crusaders two squares out from a city so they'd have to exit before attacking me. Using a bit of a convoy strategy, I'd gather 4 or 5 crusaders in striking distance, and then move 1, attack 1, hoping that the last crusader would take the then unoccupied city.

I had science all the way down, and would use gold to immediately build barracks (if needed) then a defense piece or two.

 

[Armageddon]

In the end, I had the enemy conquered in 1000 ad (I think I should get a bonus for finishing on that exact date! haha) and I think (hope) I put together a respectable game for my first outting. This strategy would have been very difficult had game conditions been different, but in this case it worked out well and was fun to boot.

Any comments on my strategy would be appreciated. Hope everyone is having a good GOTM!

 

[starlifter]

Hi Armageddon, congrats on your first GOTM! Sounds like you had a fun time! Don't worry about the various play styles... just about every strategy is used by someone at some time in the GOTM.

"Any comments on my strategy would be appreciated. " Well, naturally, I can say from personal experience that it helps to have the same strategy from the beginning, LOL. Don't forget to grow grow grow while you are conquering, esp. if you conquer in AD 1000...

BTW, the best place to put your discussion of your GOTM is in the "Spoiler" thread... Also, it's OK to combine the consecutive short posts into a larger one or two posts describing your GOTM progress (the size limit is big, at 10,000)

 

[Armageddon]

Thanks - I noticed that I should have put it in the spoiler thread after I posted.

But it was fun and definately a different kind of game than I'm used to playing.