Qsc13 Timeline and Strategy Discussion Thread

[cracker]

Welcome to the discussion thread for QSC timelines and results from GOTM13 played in November 2002.

This message thread is to facilitate discussion of game play and events that occurred in the game playing as the Aztecs.

You can access the Qsc13 results webpages at:

http://www.civfanatics.net/~gotm/qsc/results/qsc13/index.htm

If you have questions about why or how a player accomplished certain tasks in the Qsc13, this is the thread to support those discussions.

If you submitted a QSC result for GOTM13, then you may want to subscribe to this thread for a period of time so you will be notified when someone posts a question of comment.

If you have general comments or questions about Quick Start Challenge games or kudos, congratulations, or condolences for the players please post these in Qsc13 results announcement thread at:

Qsc13 results and congratulations thread

 

[Skyfish]

I am humbled.

Kudos to the winners.

I did follow a strategy that failed miserably so I knew my score
was not too good...

I notice that the biggest scores came from following an ICS strategy, not that I complain but can we say that ICS is always the best tactic ?

GnikDrasi you built 2 wonders plus an Army ! Was it all from getting GLs ?

 

[Yndy]

Well since nobody has anything to say to open the discussion I will (Edit: noticed that someone beat me to it and has a different opinion than me but I’m not going to change what I wrote now). I read the first timelines and the ones belonging to the people i know better form the forum. I'm surprised by the much different approaches taken by the people that submitted. I think that I could see the level of play they are used to play.

The winners relied on heavy warmongering and quick assaults on the AI with only a handful of units. They succeeded and thus gained cities and land and workers and tech. I believe that is the best Monarch strategy as the AI cannot defend if you mass-produce vet units in the beginning.

I consider the strategy used by Moonsinger as excellent for Emperor games. The war declarations got her free cash and no battles were fought as the AI is not strong enough. Still the AI focused on building units (war-mode) and was delayed while Moonsinger developed her civ.

I think Dave took a Deity strategy keeping everyone polite and avoiding any wars until he was ready to give the Russians the final blow. Meanwhile he took advantage of the cheaper research on monarch and got a lot of techs by knowing the AI research orders.

I also noted some other strategies like the ICS close build, which theoretically should work on any level but I’m not familiar with it and cannot comment on the early effect of it given the current map.

Finally I have not submitted, as I did not have a timeline or a clue about how the scores and reports would look like. I think they are great and I will definitely start with the QSC from January. But to give you the general idea of my game (that I submitted as a loss to GOMT) my strategy was to build 3 cities close to each other with barracks and then to build war units and take out everyone. It should have worked but I built a granary in Teno and I didn’t cave to an early Russian demand.

As a note to cracker, please change the link to the score and rules so that it would not contain you name. My sys admin banned some words in the address. Cracker is of course one of them. I could take a look from home but I tend to play home and check the forum at work.

 

[Phillip_martin]

Wow......

Three mentions - Pacesetter, Warmonger and I Cramus.

All of these were a result of what most discovered early into the game - with such a difficult starting location and with so many dangerous neighbors, something had to be done quick.

Culture or war???

While I chose the latter both would require a decent base to pull it off - IMO a tight city pattern.

I have attached a view of my core map at 1000BC. Note that this is not an ICS (Infinite City Sprawl) strategy. A true ICS has cities at a regular 2 to 3 tile distance.

My only regret, looking at this screenshot is that I wish I had pop rushed those city improvements earlier so as to beat Col's score (less than 200 point in it) Congrats Col on our unofficial challenge.

Well done to those who participated and in case anyone was wondering that I had broken the shackels of my builder ethic, I submitted a GOTM Diplomatic victory at the end of the game

 

[Skyfish]

Nice one Philip !

The strategies is indeed not ICS, I forgot in my previous post that actually some of us managed to win against the Russians and Persians which will had few more cities without it being an ICS.
The tighter build was definitely the right strategy, this something I learned now. I also make the same mistake in GOTM14 I think...

Just out of curiosity : what date did you pull the Diplo win ?
I got the diplo win as well (but I wanna know if I can beat you on the Philibuster award (;-)))

 

[Ronald]

Hi Yndy,

Thanks for the insights you stated about the different strategies and on which level they might be most effective.
I am playing mostly on monarch and emperor level. I find it very interesting that you mentioned the strategy used by moonsinger to not having real wars early on, but just slowing down opponents by capturing scouts and workers is a typical emperor strategy gave me new ideas for playing emperor level games.
I will try to evaluate my normal strategy for both levels, what you call best suited for monarch level, to what moonsinger was doing.

Some other thoughts:
The initial stragety has to be adapted to the strenghts of your civ and to the dangers your next door neighbours. Having the Russians and the Persians very close to you really ask for early wars.
If you don't take them on right away, they will, so it is better to engage them in wars when you want instead of waiting till they are ready for war. You know they will go to war with you sooner or later.
Having more peaceful civs close gives other options.

After looking in more detail to the different timelines I will come back with some more thoughts and observations.

Ronald

 

[Phillip_martin]

Originally posted by Skyfish
Just out of curiosity : what date did you pull the Diplo win ?
I got the diplo win as well (but I wanna know if I can beat you on the Philibuster award (;-)))

It was 1898. I actually went through a process of postponing the vote (I had a leader waiting) for a while with a “green milk” as I wanted to increase my score. When it came to disbanding my capital which was pushing me towards a 100k cultural victory with it’s wonders, I called the vote.

Note: My definition of a “green milk” is to let the governors manage my happiness while disbanding all of my non-essential cultural buildings and focussing on keeping the AI civs on my side.

Your Philibuster quest should not be threatened by me