News: BOTM 15 Final Spoiler: Game Submitted or Abandoned

[DynamicSpirit]

BOTM 15 Final Spoiler

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[peterzl]

after building the second gem city on the south east, I found a Mongol city founded on the south, where was my original plan to place the third city. And I knew there would be a war between us eventually.

I started chopping all the trees within my two city radius to pop 10 more chariots, and captured 3 workers from the first turn of the war.

1350 BC: I quickly finished Mongolia over and finally captured three of their cities. started spamming cottage on all the plains.
(by that time, I knew I was going to win, as I pushed the border quite south near the Indian Capital. Quite big territory to win a spaceship race.)

I contacted the other continent by 1070 AD which was quite late I think. Fortunately, their technology was even slower than me.

I played quite quickly and leisurely till my spaceship won at 1917 AD. Gandhi became my vessel btw, just for some more lands for tech race.

I even carelessly lost two settlers from the bars .

I did thought about winning a domination game, and it can win much earlier with higher scores... (I was quite early to have rifle when the AIs were much slower then me.) Maybe next time .

Tech, Tech, Tech, life is easy and boring this way.

 

[peterzl]

BTW, it is my first BOTM game. Thanks for the efforts to make it great!

 

[Adama]

After a tough start, I continued to flounder. I missed the Great Library, by just a wee little bit, oh say, well maybe, oh I don’t know, maybe 40 or 50 turns !!

I almost lost another city to the Barbs. (Sacrificed an enticing worker to the Barb Spearman to allow time to recover). Losing my second city (Hariharai) to the infidels in 1525BC had convinced me that the pagan RNG Gawds that they worshipped were quite powerful indeed.

Gandhi disappeared into the jowls of the Mongols, and the cannibals came after me for dessert.

I lost a Conquest Defeat ca. 1190AD. Not my best effort, but Emperor is beyond my current ability also. I would have stood a better chance on the Adventurer save, but for some unknown reason, unfathomable to me at this point, I downloaded the Contender save and tried to play in the big girls’ sand box.

Adama

 

[Adama]

BTW, it is my first BOTM game.

Congratulations, peterzl !!

 

[ianw1610]

I began with a pre-mediatated strategy to aim for a Religious victory, so was more than a little to find Kublai next door.

Settled on the East Plains Hill, which ultimately contained Iron (useful for defence...) Broadly, I had two objectives... a minor objective of teching up to Optics to sail to the other contient and spread the religion, and a major objective to get stong enough Diplo relations with Kublai and Gandhi for them to vote me as winner.

On the minor objective, teching was verrrrrrrrrry slow... when I got to the other continent, it was nothing more than a fleeting visit - said hello to each leader, and used a missionary in a small city in each case. Had no intention of persuading those 4 to vote for me, so contact was short and sweet. One of them was running Theocracy, and not able to accept my missionary directly, so I gifted the missionary to him, and the AI leader kindly spread the religion to a city... what a generous gentleman!!!

On the major objective... Kublai hated Gandhi with a vengeance... Gandhi hated Kublai with a vengeance. Normally, for a Religious victory, the player steadily builds up +8 of relations with each AI to earn votes. To get those two to vote for me, I had to build up a staggering 14 positive Diplo points with both Kublai and Gandhi, to counter their respective -4 for trading with worst enemy, -1 for not stopping trading, and -1 for not declaring war, whilst maintaining a surplus of +8. Both are Religious fanatics, so I got many + points from having a shared Religion with both of them, and then I gifted, and gifted, and gifted again...

...and my outrageous gestures of goodwill (or, blatant bribery, if you will...) worked!! Religious victory, in the 1000AD-1500AD bracket. Somebody somewhere is bound to have a quicker Religious win, but any victory on an Emperor xOTM is always a good thing!!!

 

[beestar]

Victory Plan: Kill The Neighbours

So ... my first Emperor game I thought I'd play it safe by going for an axe rush to recover an early advantage, avoid getting into wars, and aim for a space race which the AI doesn't generally do very well.

Early exploration showed that we were located in the north of the map, so I expanded to the south to choke off Kublai which was successful. I noticed that Kublai had conquered Teoihuacan, which really worried me as there was no other Aztec city on the continent. Did Kublai already conquer the Aztec civilization? Was Monty expanding so fast that he had sailed by galley from a neighbouring island? It turned out to be a false alarm - Teoihuacan is one of the barb citynames as well.


Victory Plan 2.0: be A Wimp

A critical turning point took place early on - my initial plan was to grab a big territory to dominate peacefully, and Kublai was the main target. The Mongol had a large army but it was busy fighting Gandhi, and Karakorum was only two forested tiles away from my borders. It was tempting ... but if I was unsuccessful in the war and Kublai was left alive but furious, I would be stuck with a large military drain on my economy to fend off a nearby enemy, and I would eventually sail to the other continent to find them all against me as well (since they had the three early religions and our continent was all Confucian).

Against my instincts, I decided to be Kublai's Confucian little brother and try to buddy up with him against the western continent heathen. As a result I had a much smaller empire than I am really comfortable with, but Khan stayed Friendly or Pleased with me through the game.


Dumb Luck: being dumb, getting lucky

Early wonders: Pyramids and Great Library. This time I remembered to actually use the power of the Pyramids and revolted to Representation immediately, and I was pleased to see a timely increase in happiness in my fortified border cities and other cities.

A few turns later, after noticing that my beaker rate wasn't much better, I realized that I had actually clicked on Hereditary Rule.

On the other hand, I was very very lucky with the RNG despite the No Random Events setting. I popped Archery from a hut, a mine popped a gems resource, another mine popped a gold resource, I settled a city on what later turned out to be iron, mines popped another gems a few centuries later, and I popped iron and coal in one of my border cities.

All this dumb luck helped me slowly built my way to a tech lead. Things were looking good for the peaceful Khmer!


Overseas Misdaventures

In the west, HC vassalized Brennus and Justy vassalized Charlemagne, and they were all coreligionists. Not good. I helped to get HC and Justy unhappy with each other and they fought two wars. Fortunately neither one vassalized to the other, as a single continental empire would have been a fearful competitor.

Things started to go weird in the 19th century. The Incan empire was huge and its three best cities numbers were already above 30,000 culture - Huayna was heading toward a cultural victory in 200 turns, and a lot faster if he spammed a few Great Artists. I didn't have the army to stop him and the AI sucks at naval warfare so I wasn't convinced Kublai could do it either.

So ... I decided to try to win a diplo victory by building the UN and joining HC's war with Justy to get HC's votes (but first gifting some powerful military units to Justy so that Justy would conquer the 3rd cultural city, Tiwanaku as an insurance policy).

This turned out to be a really dumb move.

As a phony war, fighting with HC against Justy didn't cost me soldiers, but it didn't really help HC love me, and Justy was getting killed. Kublai declared on HC as well and I couldn't afford any demerits with him, so I ended the war. By this time, the UN had been built by Kublai. It was looking bad for the Khmer.


Our Words Are Backed By Nuclear Weapons

Other civs were teching ahead of me and building the Apollo Program, but HC's cultural victory was still the biggest threat. An overseas ground war would be hopeless against the huge Incan empire, so instead I had my Ironworks city build the Manhattan Project and declared on HC. A few ICBMs killed the towns around Tiwanaku, but it didn't seem to slow down the city's culture rate at all (Culture buildings? Settled Great Artists?). And despite my nukes crippling a number of Incan stacks and cities, Justy and Kublai failed to conquer HC. I really didn't want to spend hammers on an overseas invasion force - other civs were clearly producing more hammers than my small empire now and my space race was lagging - but in the mid 1900s it was becoming obvious that no one else was going to stop HC.

Well, it turns out that you only need six tanks and a few infantry units to raze a city defended by a 20-unit stack. As long as you nuke the crap out of the city first and make sure to take out the reinforcement SOD too.

With the cultural threat out of the way I got a space victory in 1964. All my screwups meant that it was a close one - my spaceship reached Alpha Centauri in 15 turns, and on the turn immediately after Justinian launched his own spaceship. Whew! My first Emperor victory. Lots of room for improvement but I was very happy to have won.

Final tally: 14 ICBMs built, and after the spaceship was launched about an equal number of tactical nukes at the end to prevent any uppity AIs (*ahem* Kublai) from trying to conquer my capital.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Emperor is closer to my skill level (immortal), so this one isn't necessarily a gimme. When I spawned next to KK, I wasn't exactly thrilled - looked like early war if he had no other targets.

Then I met Gandhi .

The variance in peace weight between the two nearly guarantees they'll be at each other's throat first before I'd see any action. I used that opportunity to:

1. Build the pyramids (we had accessible stone) and block northern land
2. Found confuc. and taoism while just teching normally toward bureaucracy and then liberalism. Taoism beat out Gandhi's christianity for KK's religion, so I actually created a tao bloc! Hah!
3. Win lib in the 600-800 AD range.

With taoism + bureaucracy, KK was friendly with me before he even thought of declaring on Gandhi. I used this to my advantage, trade whoring massively with him at no WFYABTA cap.

This led to some tech disparity. The other continent was divided (both buddhism and hindu went over there after all), so I invaded the other continent before warring on my soil (KK declared on Gandhi and I did that too in the 1000's, to pay lip service, Gandhi obviously vassaled).

My troop force on the other continent? Infantry and cannon, vs muskets and below. It didn't take long to vassal the entire continent like it was nothing. I kept the cities I took though, and stationed units in them to keep them out of revolt.

The problem after doing that is KK would obviously average the dispositions and be a threat to declare, but also he ran away from me in tech while I was invading (I'd workshopped over pretty much everything in SP to churn factory/coal/infantry/cannon out). I built wealth to speed tech to one final tech: Artillery.

KK had tanks, marines, and so forth, while I just had infantry/arty. I declared on him, waited for his stack to enter my territory, and using just infantry/arty killed about 50 units worth of tanks, marines, infantry, arty, and anti-tanks with around a 4-1 kill ratio in my favor. Marching through his territory was tough with his tech lead, rails, and tanks. I used guerrilla II or III (one city had WP and made 11 xp infantry very rapidly) infantry on hills where possible, otherwise just combat. Arty owned vs the cities, especially the CR III arty. It was slow going though so I only finished my domination in the 1800's.

 

[Vynd]

In 1864 I was 5 turns away from a Space Race victory, and I stopped for the night. When I tried to finish up the game the next day, I discovered that all of my save files for the previous day were somehow corrupted. Including the autosaves. I kept getting C++ Runtime errors. Bummer.

So no submission for me.

I thought I got off to a pretty good start. I wanted to play a peaceful technology game this time. I settled east of start on top of what turned out to be Iron. I popped Gems in a hill south of the capital two turns after I finished building my first mine. I built three more cities fairly early, and the Pyramids, before I ran into trouble.

Kublai declared war on me in the late BCs and came after me with a lot of Keshiks, whereas I had Archers and Chariots. I discovered Iron Working not long after the war started. Without it I'd probably have lost. I also had to bribe Gandhi into declaring on Kublai to open a second front. It took me a long time to turn the tide and eventually press forward to capture a Mongol city and gain peace.

Now it was clear that I'd have to more or less eliminate Kublai in order to be safe, so I got myself some Ballista Elephants and lots of Catapults and started another war a few hundred years later. I systematically drove the Mongols out of the eastern half of the continent and captured Karakorum itself, then made peace again to rebuild my forces. A final war in the 1000 ADs resulted in two more cities captured and Kublai's vassalization.

That was about it for the excitement. With all those wars and my now large and spread-out empire it took me a long time to get my economy on track. But I was still somehow able to get to Liberalism before Gandhi and really from that point forward it was a steady march towards my spaceship. The only question was whether Gandhi would win a cultural victory before I finished, which was still a possibility when my save files died on me. he had one Legendary city and a couple in the 50k range so if he had some Great Artists hanging about he might have been able to catch me.

 

[greatbeyond]

Contender Start
It looks like befriending KK was the better path.

Picking up from where I left off, I play with G, trying to get something useful out of him. My economy is non existent. Military units are being disbanded all the time. Even though it shows zero for unit support. I disband new units as they are built, to avoid having my veteran units disbanded. Why does it always pick the best units to disband? I finally get to PH (920AD!) and get Temples built. Yes, I told you progress was slow.

1030AD, get Masonry and Ag from G
1550AD first contact with HRE, others follow (Caravels). Soon I'll have to worry about them settling the last areas on my continent, so I build a few more Settlers and eventually take up all the good land. Justinian and NC each end up building one city. I Trade my World map for gold to keep my economy going. One of them adopts Emancipation and now I have a real happiness problem.

1690AD I learn Alpha, and my first GS is born. I did say research was abysmal, didn't I?

I use the GS to spark a GA and quickly learn COL followed by Philo. Courthouses are built in every city, followed by the FP in Bombay. My economy is back. I get a GrSpy and plant him in a city HC has built on my continent. I use Spies to steal techs from here on out. I am trying to catch up and have almost completed Guilds when Brennus decides to attack. He takes one of my small cities on the SW coast, with Rifles and Cannons

I rush enough units into the nearby cities so that he'll be deterred from trying to get them. I guess with everything going on in his home continent, he can't afford to do more. I finally get peace from Brennus for 600G and it's back to research.

I have ~40% of the land area needed for victory, but realize there's no way I'll win by Domination. I'm hoping that someone builds the UN for me or I get to it myself. HC has the AP and is continually trying to vote himself in, but to no avail.

Finally in 1896, HC wins a cultural victory. Justinian has just completed the Apollo program so there was no chance to win this one after such a horrid mid-game.

In retrospect I could have taken the plunge and just kept Karakorum and Bombay and 2 or 3 strategic cities, which would have allowed a very good economy and a tech lead.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

As I settled my fifth city, I realized I'd crashed my economy and was losing money at 0% science. I saved, set aside the game, played some other games, and never went back to it.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

As I settled my fifth city, I realized I'd crashed my economy and was losing money at 0% science. I saved, set aside the game, played some other games, and never went back to it.

Cottages!!

 

[beestar]

Contender Start
Picking up from where I left off, I play with G, trying to get something useful out of him. My economy is non existent. Military units are being disbanded all the time. Even though it shows zero for unit support. I disband new units as they are built, to avoid having my veteran units disbanded. Why does it always pick the best units to disband? I finally get to PH (920AD!) and get Temples built. Yes, I told you progress was slow.

greatbeyond,

The 500AD writeup sounded dominating. You had wiped out KK and Gandhi, and had the whole continent to yourself to fill with cities ... were the expenses mainly maintenance or unit costs?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

greatbeyond,

The 500AD writeup sounded dominating. You had wiped out KK and Gandhi, and had the whole continent to yourself to fill with cities ... were the expenses mainly maintenance or unit costs?

In that situation, it is ALMOST ALWAYS the cities - both # of cities and distance maintenance (more pop adds free unit maintenance, but not nearly to the extent of the city maintenance growth). If you want to dig out ASAP you need at least writing, but alphabet or currency are better since you can not only run specs but convert hammers as needed. Cottage the cities that make sense to cottage, hammer cities build research until you hit currency, then they build wealth (usually you have more libraries/science % multipliers, so wealth is better). Whip in a few courthouses and you're set to fill the whole continent for a runaway civ.

There's a couple opposing forces as to what's better - the AI doesn't optimize land as well as the human, and might not trade tech. On the other hand, we can better afford land as time goes on due to our tech.

 

[Mungo_84]

Tried to early war with Kubli, but it didn't pay off. Retired in frustration. Even with Adventurer, Emperor is way over head. Still, reading about how the pros do it is awesome, thanks to everyone who takes the time to put in a write up.

 

[Swiss Pauli]

CV 1802 (not submitted as I couldn't be bothered with the Vista workaround).

Not amused to see KK to the South, but it could have been worse. Please to see Ghandi, of course Expanded conservatively (coastal hills first) and kept a decent supply of units. KK went into WHEOOH early, and I was relieved in BC 900 when he attacked Ghandi. The war gave me a chance to expand without fear. Ghandi did well, as KK had mistimed his attack, and they traded Old Sarai a few times before making peace in BC95.

I snagged a late Great Lighthouse, but missed late Pyramid (BC20- HC). Got HG in AD55, and SoZ in 175. KK was back in WHEOOH and declared on Ghandi again in AD 355. KK would repeat his useless attacks throughout the game, whilst I got on with securing my CV. Ghandi founded Taoism which we all adopted. I got the Music Artist, Sistene, Parthenon, but missed out on MoM (as my high chances of non-Artist made a GA a likely option at some point).

Liberalism in 1000AD (Nationalism). Used an artist for a GA. Probably a waste...built Taj, and focused on my CV, but I did keep teching to Biology as the threat from KK and the other continent seemed pretty real. I was mightily relieved when a Byzantine attack fleet I was tracking headed south to DoW Ghandi, whom everyone but me hated. Thankfully repeated DoWs meant he prioritized military techs that I could buy, allowing me an unmolested win.

 

[oncable]

Contender start.
Notes while playing.

Where to settle? Many good possibilities. I chose the west coast (ah, those California girls and California weather) with 3 food - pig, fish and corn. Sent scout south and he finds Mongolia with corn just inside border needing worker. Perfect opp for borrowing a worker. Kublai is aggressive so will be trouble sooner or later anyway. Switch production from worker to warrior.

3450 BC - Mongolian worker converts to Khmerism. Seems to take to new culture very readily. Now what to do with my army of one warrior. Leave him sit on corn to deprive Mongolia of the food? Or make peace and come
back later on the chance that the Kublai will make another worker for me? Chose latter.

2700 BC - grab second Mongol worker . Peace again with Mongolia. Kublai only has one weak city now (by marble). I told him to put the tea on for my next visit and we can be pals, while thinking "I'll be back" a la Schwarzenegger. With an actual army.

Built a settler to get stone and start Great Wall.

While charioteering on a sunny Sunday afternoon along the borders of India I came upon a fast worker who was just itching to take things a little slower under a different boss. After looking over his CV I obliged and agreed to take him on as well as a friend of his. With a few other chariots assisting Delhi soon had the Khmer flag over it and the other 2 Indian cities were rubble. It was a shame because one had copper which would have been nice but I figured it would be too costly to keep.

Now back to Kublai and sure enough in my absence he was nice enough to make another worker for me. I thanked him for the generous donation then destroyed his last city and his empire. I can have tea and find pals later, maybe next game. Now have continent to myself and the safety of the Great Wall.

Built Great Lighthouse for my economy and new cities were carefully coastal.
Built Pyramids to raise happy cap.
Kinda went wonder happy, with Colossus, Great Library, Taj, Parth, Sistine, Moai, Hang Garden, Zeus, MoM, Oxford.

Keeping research up and expanding when affordable.

Annoying bug that won't let me upgrade Great Leader chariot even though I have all prereqs.

Liberalism took Nat.

Galleon round the world for bonus movement.

Met the other civs who were unanimous in their serious dislike of Brennus. When asked, I graciously joined the brouhaha and took 3 of his cities. Brennus caps.

The main wonder-city on this continent is Cuzco which had virtually all the wonders I didn't have - so needless to say I had to have it, along with a lot of other nice Inca cities that were virtually defenseless against my cavalry. The nice thing about cavs are that you don't need the slow/stupid siege things. Huayna caps.

Now I just have to fill out my starting continent to get the percentages up.

Dom vic 1744.

 

[oldcivaddict]

oncable - absolutely hilarious writeup! Great playing too.

 

[greatbeyond]

greatbeyond,

The 500AD writeup sounded dominating. You had wiped out KK and Gandhi, and had the whole continent to yourself to fill with cities ... were the expenses mainly maintenance or unit costs?

TMIT is right with his post. I thought I was well on my way to a solid victory, but the crashed economy did me in. The crippling part was city maintenance, I rarely was into a situation of having to pay unit support. I tried to compensate but there wasn't enough gold to be had capturing and razing the few Barb cities.

You can see from my post how long it took me to get Alpha. I should have researched Pottery after The Wheel and made COL a priority. Once I got COL and built CH and the FP, my money woes virtually went away, but it was way to late, even with most tiles cottaged and grown to Towns (Lots of gold after I got PrPress). As I mentioned before, I probably should have stuck with fewer cities and razed most.
Playing as the Khmer was part of the problem as they don't have any financial advantage. Always play to your leader's strengths.

Note to self: listen to your own advice!

 

[nokem]

At 445AD I was busy chewing through Kublai's cities with catapults and elephants. I had made the mistake of relying too heavily on the unique unit. Elephants are far too easily countered to be the mainstay of an assault force. I should have taken a lot more axes. However once macemen were available the last few holdouts collapsed easily. The Mongolian war finally finished in 820AD with Khan exiled to a rocky outcrop. Ghandi put him out of his misery a few hundred years later.

I cosied up to the Indians and traded for backfill techs while I aimed for liberalism, reaching it first in 1210AD. I had considered nationalism or another military tech, but settled in the end for astronomy. I was in the process of converting to a cottage economy so the intercontinental trade routes would help keep my tech rate up. Also I didn't need to draft troops to beat Ghandi, and I didn't need to invade the other continent to win the game.

I set my sights on a spaceship victory, while keeping a diplomatic win in my back pocket. In fact the second continent divided fairly equally between Justinian and his vassal Hayna, and Charlemagne and his vassal Brennus. Constant warring impeded their tech rates and allowed me a decisive lead. I took sides with Justinian and joined a few phony wars.

In 1495 I invaded India with rifles and cannon. I picked off a few of the better city locations to bolster my science rate and secure some good production centres for spaceship parts. Ghandi became my vassal without further bloodshed; a few judicious tech gifts improved our relations sufficiently to resume tech trades. I tried to focus him on military techs to act as a buffer against possible raiding parties from across the water.

My tech path through the modern era was far from optimal, but better than average for me. I kept an eye on culture rates but all the AIs seemed to be aiming for space also. The Khmer ship arrived in 1920 to record my second ever victory at emperor (the first was on an archipelago map with a hand-picked leader). Thanks for a great map DS.

nokem