[BTS] News: BOTM 265: Genghis Khan, Monarch - Final spoiler (submitted or quitted)

[kcd_swede]

BOTM 265: Genghis Khan, Monarch - Final Spoiler - Game Submitted



So... crazy game or what?
Use this thread to tell us what happened in your game, particularly anything after 1AD


Reading Requirements
If you are participating in BOTM 265 then you MUST NOT read this thread unless

• You have submitted your entry

Posting Restrictions

• Do not post any savegame file from the game. Discussions and screenshots are fine but not actual games.

 

[MarleysGh0st]

The island turned out to be much larger than I expected! Just filling that with cities took a lot of time, but by 1 AD I had developed a strategic plan:

1. The island is mine!
2. To protect my island (and all of my fishing boats), the sea must be mine!
3. To protect the sea, all enemy cities on the coast must be razed!

This was a pretty ambitious plan (I dismissed the idea of being able to capture and hold the coastal cities, with all of the island to defend), but I made reasonable progress on these goals, building the Colossus and founding Confucianism to spread the faith throughout my cities. With the help of my Great Generals, I took advantage of my Gers to train a force of Amphiphants. These managed to raze five cities by 1500 (one English, one Indian, two Chinese, and one Aztec). Two of these were lasting victories, with the AI not rebuilding on the coast. (If they rebuilt inland, they wouldn't be able to build a navy to threaten me.) Unfortunately, the AI still had other coastal cities with large armies gathered in them, which I had no hope of attacking.

And by this time, three of the AI had researched Astronomy. To have any hope of maintaining control of the sea, I had to beeline Chemistry and then Astronomy (even though this made the Colossus obsolete). England and China had their Frigates at roughly the same time I did. I made one more attempt to raze an Incan city, which they held with a single unit with a single hit point left after my attack. And right after I launched my fleet from Almarikh, Monty landed his own invasion force to attack that city.

This began a long, desperate defensive war. I held Almarikh, but then Monty surprised me by taking lightly defended Turfan with an amphibious assault. I liberated that, but attacks kept coming. China made some attempts at my capital. I managed to raze one more Aztec city in 1735, as a last act of defiance. But in the meantime, AI frigates had sunk all of my fishing fleet and were bombarding cities at will. I hoped Ironclads would help me win back control of the sea, but by that time some of the AI had Destroyers.

I played it out to 1840, before deciding it was time to retire. I wouldn't have lasted as long as that, if the AI were at all competent at amphibious invasions. England, India, and Native America never tried an invasion at all, and the Incans only tried one token effort. But the pressure from China and the Aztecs was enough, with their growing tech lead, so that my only "hope" was to survive long enough for one of the AI to win one of the peaceful victory conditions before I was ground to dust. Where's the fun in that?

As always, it frustrates me to submit a Retired game, particularly since there aren't even any Ambulance awards for these as a consolation prize. But a new game has started already, with a new opportunity to raise (or crush) my hopes!

 

[kcd_swede]

I hope it was fun. I know Always War is brutal, but if victory was guaranteed, where would the fun be in that.

 

[MarleysGh0st]

I hope it was fun. I know Always War is brutal, but if victory was guaranteed, where would the fun be in that.

I'm prepared to suffer the occasional loss. What frustrates me, after all the years I've been playing this game, is that I haven't been able to substantially improve my game. Then our Deity players report having an easy time of it, and I have no idea how they do it. Even with the other first spoilers posted so far in this game, they have more cities and more wonders and faster tech rates and--in one case--they've gone on the offensive and captured an AI capital. How? How? How???

And I know I sound petty and whiny when I complain about not being eligible for an ambulance for a retired game. Basically, retiring from a game can mean two very different things.

1. I've just run out of time IRL and can't complete the game before the deadline, but a victory remained a possibility, even a strong probability, if I did have the time. Or...
2. I've definitely lost the game. I capitulate. I bend the knee. I surrender unconditionally! Just don't force me to play it out until I'm completely ground to dust.

That second one--that was me.

 

[kcd_swede]

When I want to capitulate but hope for a green ambulance, just delete all units, war with everyone, and keep hitting enter until the game is over. You'll be surprised at how bad the AI is at conquest victory.

 

[MarleysGh0st]

When I want to capitulate but hope for a green ambulance, just delete all units, war with everyone, and keep hitting enter until the game is over. You'll be surprised at how bad the AI is at conquest victory.

I think that deliberately giving away all of my cities is cheating to lose. And if the AI is too stupid to walk into my open cities...

There was a time, a few games ago, when I voted for an AI instead of for myself to try to give him a victory, but he still didn't have enough votes to win.

 

[kcd_swede]

 

[Smiregal]

In the early Ads The Battle for the Seas began. After the initial galley sinking, tiremes clashed everywere mostly with monty though. After CS came in I decided that medieval-warefare would be to much of a drag, because of the slower speed and more units needed. So I went for Cuirs asap. While backfilling monarcy and Musik which was needed anyway, I bulbed edu (for Oxford 1070ad) before going for nationalism and miltrad. Then in 1090ad I took my first mainland city from lizy who was generally weak and since the northern sea was safe from montys triremes much safer to reach. After killing Liz I just brute forced my way west through Sittingbull and after some build up also west through Quin. Tecwise I backfiled guilds banking and engeneering to be able to lib biology via the chemistry route and picking up communism for the much needed state property and then going for rifiling.
While going through SB I developed the Idea of going to space. Since I already had picked up a lot of land I thought I would kill two of the remaining AIs and leave one with one city, razing almost every city exept for the really good ones. But when the chinese and Incan Cities started to come out of revolte I was already at 42 % landcontrol, I realised that I had picked up to many cities already and did not want to end up with a late domination while going for space. Thats when I decided to just go through India and the Aztecs so I could pick up more cities and end up with a conquest victory, since the conquered cities took to long to come out of revolt.
I used to play AWscenarios quite a lot so I enjoyed this map very much. Especialy the protection by island was a nice twist that helpt a lot and made it winable for me. I belive monarc difficulty especialy with tectrading still on can be quite challenging.

@MarleysGh0st : I feel you! It has happened to me too. How can they do that? I m shure if you have already done that. But I always learn a lot by replaying those maps after studying the erventlogs and saves of those players. It is of just one piece of the puzzle.

 

[LowtherCastle]

This was a uniquely well-suited game for ironclads. They just beat the crap out of the few frigates I encountered. Also since I spammed upwards of 20 GGs I used several to make Drill IV machine guns for my front- and backline cities. It was hilarious how many scratchless battles they won. Counted six one turn.

This was a great map for stone-aging AIs a la Frederiksburg but alas I didn’t think of it so my game lasted into the 1800s.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Like @LowtherCastle wrote, I did try to Stone-age or at least slow down the AI, but I didn't execute the strategy in the best way. My major mistakes were to build pillaging stacks that were too vulnerable. The axe/spear combo didn't work at all against the dog soldiers (but Keshik/spear did) and the axes needed to be shock promoted. Thus I should have waited for keshiks and barracks before sending the pillagers.

The game progressed from 1AD with a focus on reaching guilds. My gut feeling was that keshiks could not do enough damage before protective longbows would show up and I was a bit worried that even the knights might struggle to get the job done. At 640 AD I finally hit Guilds and none of the AI had Feudalism yet. Lizzie was my first target, and she folded easily. I razed all captured cities except London, which was on a hill, and I wanted to use it as a magnet for the AI stacks so that they would leave the AI cities with fewer defenders. Next on the menu were Sitting Bull and Mao, but unfortunately SB was the first to research feudalism and he got his protective longbows before I could start attacking. With only a moderately sized stack of knights and no catapults to speak of I had to give up taking his best defended hill cities. Attacking odds were only a few percent, even for my level 3 or 4 knights. At this point I started to doubt the viability of the knight based conquest, but I felt comitted to the strategy and after some deliberations I decided to research Engineering for trebs and then push with my knight conquest. In the meantime, I would use my Knight stack in native Indian territory in a more opportunistic fashion capturing and razing some of the smaller, flatland cities. The other knight stack went for Mao and managed to raze a city before he also got protective longbows. Again, I switched to a strategy of picking easy targets and razed a couple of cities on my way to India. Gandhi was the last one to get feudalism, but he got it a few turns before my Chinese stack arrived at his borders. Most of his cities were, however, on flatland. His longbows were not protective, and I had my first trebs, so he was the second AI to be eliminated. Another problem appeared on the battlefield as Huyana started fielding War Elephants and after a few encounters with said elephants, my Native Indian stack was cut down to only 4 units when it finally reached Incan territory. In order to deal with the elephants and the protective longbows, I continued bulding a mix of trebs and knights (and the odd pike, xbow or longbow for stack defense). I got a lot of great generals, more than I needed for super medics, so I also created some super trebs with extra movement ("morale" promotion). This allowed me to rebuild my army at the incan border with some trebs and fresh knights. Unfortunately, Monty and soon after Capac also got Engineering and put Castles in most of their cities. Eventually all the remaining AI got Engineering, and the castles slowed the conquest significantly, but the final outcome was no longer in doubt because all the AI had been attacked once and weakened considerably. Monty and Mao in particular had wasted many units against the walls and castle of London. Mopping up did, however take a long time and I didn't finish until 1655 AD. I do feel the going for Knights was a good call, and with a more focused first half of the game the finish date could have been much earlier. If I had known from the beginning that I needed knights I would probably have rex'ed faster and definitely tried to get an Engineer for bulbing Machinery. It's all about conquering a couple of AI's before they got longbows and ending the conquest before the AI's get Engineering and castles.

Thanks to @kcd_swede for the map! Great game, not a dull moment!

 

[antimony]

Religious loss to China in 1260 AD. Eliminated 3 AIs (Liz, SB, HC) with Keshik and got to around 55 percent land before needing siege to counter longbows. Unfortunately first Monty city I took had AP and I forgot to raze it.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Religious loss to China in 1260 AD. Eliminated 3 AIs (Liz, SB, HC) with Keshik and got to around 55 percent land before needing siege to counter longbows. Unfortunately first Monty city I took had AP and I forgot to raze it.

Oooh that's bad luck. I guess with the AI all certain to get super-friendly with each other due to the mutual war, there's very little defence against that - other than either building the AP ourselves, or razing the AI city that builds it (if reachable).

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Well I said in the first spoiler I had an idea for settling the main outer continent and it's this:

This is Kazan - recently established around 700 AD. I'm certain that every AI is about to send stack after stack at Kazan. But I'll have a bit of breathing space because barb cities protect me to the West, while to the East I have pillaged England's roads - England being relatively weak too: Elizabeth seems to build very few units, even when at war. Then my plan for defending the city is to simply leave it undefended so AI stacks can walk into it - while my CR trebs and maces etc. sit in the forests just East of Kazan so that as soon as an AI stack moves into the city, I can wipe it out. Foolproof, huh? And in fact that plan worked beautifully! As I surmised, once the city was founded, every AI sent its stacks marching there. But just 10-20 units proved able to destroy everything that all 6 AIs were able to throw at Kazan for a long time, nicely keeping AI forces under control.

Meanwhile I started to enact the 2nd part of my plan. The theory was that with the AIs sending all their stacks to attack Kazan, most AI cities would be relatively undefended. So all I needed was a smaller stack or two to invade elsewhere and start razing everything in sight, until I'd weakened enough AIs to safely start treating this as a 'normal' game and settling elsewhere. That plan didn't go so well initially - because I chose Chinese Nanjing as my initial target. The rationale was to deal with the most threatening coastal cities first. But as soon as my units landed next to Nanjing, I had to remove them again because a super-sized Chinese stack was passing through probably en route to Kazan, and would've made mincemeat of my small city-razing stack. Then as soon as I felt safe enough to land there again, it was an Indian stack. I must've wasted at least about 15 turns playing cat and mouse like this before I realised that if I wanted to find lightly defended AI cities to raze, I had to pick targets that weren't on any route to Kazan. So I shipped my units South to the furthest point from Kazan, to attack Monty. At that point it everything fell into place. Monty's cities had typically had only a couple of loingbows defending so although it was slow work with slow-moving trebs, I found I could basically reduce Monty to 1-2 cities with minimal losses. It worked so well that I was soon sending a 2nd stack to do the same to India.

There was a 3rd part of my plan: The theory was that, if I spread Confucianism to Kazan, and let the AI sometimes hold it for 5 turns, I'd be able to steal techs really cheaply thanks to the I-have-the-shrine bonus plus it was so close to my capital. Unfortunately I never really got organised enough with building spies to do that, so I'll never know how well that would've worked.

So as at 1430 AD, India and Monty are no longer serious threats, England was never much of a threat, so for practical purposes 3 AIs left and I think I have a fair chance of teasing out a very late space race win. The only real worry is Huayna Capac who is starting to run away in tech, and he's too far away to do much about it at the moment. I think to be safe with this strategy, I needed to be much quicker at founding Kazan and then attacking the AI, and also not waste those turns on Nanjing.

And sadly, that's where my game ends. It's close to the competition deadline and I have no time to continue playing this weekend, so for me, it's, submitting a retired game. But it was a great set-up @kcd_swede.

Kudos to anyone who does manage to win - this is tough! Well done @Frederiksberg!

 

[nocho]

I played kind of quickly to 1400AD but then let my game stall for weeks until now time’s up. I had eliminated Liz at this point while SB and China were both pretty much gassed out. Sort of surprised to see mainly elephant stacks from all or most AIs which didn’t help advancing all too rapidly with my horses lol.

However, what most surprised and frankly slightly annoyed me was the mounting war weariness, 5-6 unhappy faces when I left the game. I thought that was basically disabled under AW? Didn’t see much way around it.

 

[kcd_swede]

I am slow to publish results, so if you want, you can PM me with your save if you did it without replays or pre-knowledge from threads, and I can upload to the results before I do. This offer is valid for about 48 hrs... since I am trying to be responsible; and when I get a chance to mess around with Civ I am prioritizing play over work.

 

[Bemep42]

Agr/imp Mongolia + always war just pushes us towards early war and conquest by the Keshiks. Therefore, the fact that we are on the island, I took it not only as a plus, but also as a minus. For such a war, we need a fleet of galleys, triremes are needed to protect galleys, in addition, it is more difficult to defend an island with a bunch of coastal cities than 2-3 front-line cities on the "continent". All this means a later war, which means stronger AI resistance. or you need to teach knights / cuirassiers, which I really didn't want. So, I built a Great Lighthouse for maintain the economy, for the protection of the sea and for the forges, I built an Oracle (MC), which I usually do not build, and if I build, then only for CS. After that, I populated almost our entire island (17 cities, added the 18th at the end of the game). Before settling, I managed to found Confucianism, but then my economy dropped to zero and only the construction of the Colossus returned it to a plus. As a result, by 1 AD, I secured the island with triremes, built a fleet of galleys, created an industrial and economic base for conquest, but did not have time to learn 2 key technologies - horseback riding and mathematics. And also did not learn several auxiliary ones - currency, IW, calendar, monotheism, monarchy etc. Only at 275 AD I got HR, a little later IW and mathematics.
It was only in 540 AD that I landed the first group of Keshiks on the mainland. I chose a coastal Chinese city with 2 archers as my target. China had all the wonders that I didn't build (Stonehenge, the Great Wall, etc., 7 or 8 in total). On the next turn, the archers turned into longbows. In fact, China learned feudalism in 520 AD. I just didn't notice it As a result, my first war turned out to be the longest. It wasn't until 940 A.D. that I captured last Chinese city. Keshiks do a great job with longbows when there are 5 times more of them. Although against Longbow with garrison 3, on the hill and 60% of the culture you need 6-7 Keshik. In China, such a city was Shanghai (captured in 900 AD) and it was the most fortified city of all in this game (2 LB with 3 garrison + sword + axe).
Speaking of war weariness. It accumulates from a particular AI, that is, by the end of the war with China, I had weariness 6-7, but after the destruction of China, it fell to 1-2 and so with each subsequent AI.
By the time the war with China ended, I had the 2nd army in the northwest where I captured 3 barbarian and 1 Chinese (ex-barbarian) city. This army continued the conquest clockwise ((England, Native, Inca), while the 1st attacked counterclockwise (India, Aztecs) There was a medical general in every army, besides i divided 4 more generals into 8 galleys for timely replenishment of each army (4 4-move galleys per army).
England did not have longbows, India had them in the last 2 cities, all the others had it as the main defensive unit. The Incas learned engineering very early (the rest did not even have Metal Casting), but fortunately they did not have iron. Although there were elephants, like the Natives.
Since there are no vassals in this game, I decided to play for conquest instead of the standard domination. To ensure that I could capture everyone before dominating, I learned guilds and built/upgraded about 45 knights, although I really wanted to limit myself to keshiks alone. Half of these knights were superfluous, and a quarter did not participate in any battle at all. As a result, I succeeded in the conquest in 1250 AD. 3 turns before the domination.

 

[ariosto]

Thanks for the map. That was one of the most interesting games I played lately! Really liked the setup – we start isolated in the center of the map, so we could start rather safely, and we have plenty of options for where we strike later. I also like rich maps, like this one.

With such an amazing land I didn’t consider early war at all, I focused on peaceful development instead. By T115 I had currency, CoL and Civil Service. I captured Hanstings next and finished Hanging Gardens on T121 with 19 cities. Then I went for IW and MC. Kong Miao has been finished on T127 and Colossus on T134.

I should point out that I avoided a rookie’s mistake here – after you settle 3’rd city on the other landmass you start to pay colonial expenses. So I deliberately didn’t settle on the mainland at this time. What I overlooked, though, is that the vassal states were turned off in the settings, so you don’t pay colonial expenses anyway. Actually, trying to avoid one rookie’s mistake I made another one – didn’t pay enough attention to the settings

I had all the development I wanted, what’s the next move? Initially, I wanted to kill AI’s with Knights, but there were so many problems with that plan. AI was developing faster than I expected, and it seems they beelined Feudalism. I also realized that the Merc+Rep combo is what I need to keep my economy afloat with such a wide empire. The problem was that I didn’t have Mids – Qin got them rather early, so I should have conquered them. With 19 cities I couldn’t adopt 2 civics in one turn, so I needed a golden age for that. And banking is actually the next tech after Guilds, so should have been conquered too fast, and golden age should have started on the whipped empire. So I attacked Qin a bit earlier just with elepults. I captured Beijing on T159 – exactly the same turn Banking was researched. And Paya has been built a couple turn prior to that (surprisingly great wonder in this setup).

Spoiler Beijing :

Next there was a super fun four-front war. I tried to finish China, attack India (the only AI with no Feudalism yet), defend Uzbek and London at the same time. It was challenging to decide where my troops should go. The center position helps a lot here. I made some progress with knights and trebs, but it was rather slow until the cuirrasiers. Finally, I killed both China and Indin on T186. I think, I captured nine citites in two turns.

Spoiler India dead :

Another surprisingly useful wonder I captured in Beijing was the great wall. Did you know that you get four times more great general points with IMP and GW bonus combined? Unlike the whole other game, these bonuses are multiplicative. I certainly did not know that. Thanks to that, and to the endless sieges of Uzbek, I could get 11 great generals during the game. That means 17XP AGG commando grenadier every turn in my Heroic Epic city - both AGG and IMP traits played role here. That didn't change much, but was pretty fun. There were even 27XP Cavalry commando units - thanks to the Mongolian UB.

Spoiler Commando :

I’ve had several fastest victories in my previous GOTM approaches, but no best score so far, so I was looking for the high score in this game from the very beginning. That means early biology. So my next tech path was Chemistry – Steel – Military Science – Scientific Method – Lib Biology (T189). I bulbed Education, PP, Chem and Sci Method. Could have triggered domination before T200, but in the end after milking some score I finished the game T217.

Spoiler Lib T189 :

Spoiler Stats :

 

[ariosto]

However, what most surprised and frankly slightly annoyed me was the mounting war weariness, 5-6 unhappy faces when I left the game. I thought that was basically disabled under AW?

According to this, it is halved under AW. You can also destroy the AI completely - ironically, it help to get rid of war weariness.

In my game Monty built The Statue of Zeus, and yeah, it was painful to conquer him.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

As usual, I couldn't keep up with the very best players here but still put in a decent effort. It was an incredible slog - far and away my longest Civ game ever. I wonder if I got the highest number of defeated enemy units?

Spoiler Units killed :

1105 units killed
472 military units built

From the 1AD spoiler thread it looks like my economy lagged behind in comparison. I didn't settle enough cities on the central island and didn't get the Great Lighthouse or a good Bureau capital going.

I did have a pre AD incursion into the mainland and took London. This became my "2 o'clock" defensive position. I held a defensive army here the entire game, trying to make the best use of defensive terrain and the city bonus.

My conquest aimed first for China and then VERY VERY slowly progressed anticlockwise. My economy limped along and I fought fights mostly at tech parity. I was moving my armies forward very cautiously because of all the incoming enemy stacks. This meant played tentatively "cat-n-mouse" style to try and limit losses, maybe I needed to be more headstrong and direct.

The main trick I had going was keeping a couple of cities undefended and letting them be captured (same idea as @DynamicSpirit ) but filled with my spies. I had 5 Great Spies throughout the game and probably got 75% of my post 500AD tech this way. These were some of the discounts I engineered with a moved palace, religion spread and one culture bomb:

Spoiler Spy discounts :

Game finished after getting cannons, grenadiers and cuirassiers. Domination win in 1800s. Same turn as the Incans (generally untouched by me) got Rifling.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I played Contender as I lacked the time thanks to the other, recent games. Challenger would have been quite a challenge on this map, as well as extremely time-consuming.

I started off with a Cultural Victory in mind.

Thus, I spammed Wonders.

I tried to avoid meeting the AIs, but I messed up. I saw India's Cultural Borders, but my spawn-buster stayed too close to those Cultural Borders, so when the Cultural Borders expanded, I met Gandhi, which was the second or third AI whom I met.

With +1 Shared Mutual Military Struggle every 8 turns, after 40 turns of meeting at least 2 AIs, things can start to get more dangerous, with possible Friendly tech trades being opened up amongst the AI.


I missed The Great Wall. I missed The Pyramids when I was 75% of the way there. The loss of The Pyramids meant that I later missed out on The Great Library due to the Great Engineer from The Pyramids presumably building The Great Library.

I also missed out on Angkor Wat. Otherwise, I think that I built all of the early-game Wonders.

I even built the Hermitage for its extra Culture percentage.


Things turned troublesome when both of Huayna and Gandhi invaded on the same turn. Huayna captured a City and Gandhi raze another one, at opposite ends of our island.

Huayna defended "my" City with a Spearman and a Chariot.

Two of my counter-attacks were complete failures, where I first lost a War Elephant plus a Keshik.

I then lost an Axeman, a War Elephant, and a Keshik, as my Axeman had to face an Archer that Huayna had completed, and I only wounded his Archer with my dying Axeman.

It wasn't until I brought in 3 Catapults plus supporting troops that I finally retook my City.


In the west, Gandhi's Shock-Promoted Spearman stood on a Grassland Hills Forest square, making me get 3 Axemen there before I dared to attack it.


Meanwhile, I had captured a Barb City that Gandhi had first captured on the main continent, just north of our island. I experienced the same effect of "AIs sending waves of attackers" at that City which other players saw.

To deal with the situation, I opened up another front at the opposite side, in Gandhi's territory, also taking out his Moai Statues.

Monte did take the bait, but also took that City.


I realised that I'd have to focus a lot more on military if I was going to survive on this map and thus I squeezed out a lot more troops than originally planned, but still in between of building Buildings.

I ended up going with pretty much all of the types of troops available: Archers, Axemen, Spearmen, Longbowmen, War Elephants, Pikemen, maybe only 1 Crossbowman, a LOT of Catapults, some Trebuchets, Knights, Musketmen, Cuirsassiers, Riflemen, Cavalry, and Cannons.

In the end, I found that my Cultural aspirations were too ill-attended and I just pushed on for a 1600s Domination Victory.


I did get a lot of Great People, with way too many Great Prophets. Such a thing tends to happen in a Wonder-Spamming game. I built 2 Holy Shrines and I think that I used 4 Great Prophets as the main Great Person in each of 4 Great-Person-Launched Golden Ages.


One neat lesson:
Even when you have War Elephants, when you are facing enemy War Elephants, a stack of aboout 6 Pikemen in your main attacking stack can be very useful. First, my siege Units attacked, usually facing Longbowmen. However, my War Elephants, Knights, or even Cuirassiers would have bad odds against defending Pikemen, defending War Elephants, and defending Knights.

Yet, my attacking Pikemen would face off against the wounded Longbowmen or the wounded Pikemen, and would get pretty decent battle odds. With enough attacking Pikemen, I could clear out the defending Pikemen. Then, I could attack with War Elephants without having to face defending Pikemen. I could also attack with some weaker siege Units and more usefully focus the Collateral Damage amongst the remaining War Elephants and Knights, to give my attacking mounted Units the edge.

I took a few Cities this way until Riflemen replaced the duty of the Pikemen.

Maybe I got a bit lucky with the AIs not having many Crossbowmen/Macemen, but with Ivory readily available, the AIs seemed to neglect building Crossbowmen and Macemen. On a map where the AIs cannot build War Elephants, Pikemen are probably not going to be nearly as useful, since you will typically see a lot of AI Macemen in such games.


MarleysGh0st, I wouldn't punish yourself. I would estimate that this game's settings increased the Difficulty Level to about Immortal Plus for the Contender saved game.

But, what I would suggest is that you find a way to learn from what other players do by doing the following:
1. Create a new map with settings that you like with the intention of playing the map.
2. When you find a game that you like, zoom in with your mouse wheel before opening up the World Builder to save the 4000 BC World Builder saved game. Launch the World Builder saved game as a BUFFY game so that you have the same limitations (no possibility of opening up the World Builder) and the same benefits (the better F4 screens, etc) as the players.
3. Play the map without reloading until you complete a Victory Condition. Make detailed notes of your first 100 turns.
4. Optionally, play the map again with a different Victory Condition in mind.
5. Host the map as a BOTM.
6. Pay careful attention in the First Spoiler how players played the opening. Ask people specific questions about their opening play. See how what they did compares to what you did.
7. Replay the map based on things that you learned from other players so that you can truly understand why other players did what they did.

I recall having hosted a couple of forum games for other players which I had played first. They played the map quite differently, and I learned a lot. For example, in one game, I had 2 nearby Gold Resources in my capital's big-fat-cross and they built an early, overlapping City, which I did not even consider doing. It even seemed "wasteful" to me at the time when I saw how they did it. Then, I replayed the early turns of the map and found that their tactic worked much better than only settling "perfect Cities with no overlap." I have since changed my approach and have become a much better player for it. Sometimes, you just have to live through the experiences. Being a Map Maker puts you in a strong position to really learn how others did things differently, if you take the time to also play through the games that you create.