SGOTM6 Celts - Game Over Spoiler

[mad-bax]

SGOTM6 Celts - Game Over Spoiler

To qualify for this spoiler players need to meet two criteria.
1. The team must have submitted their endgame to the server.
2. The nominated scribe must have posted a synopsis of the game from the middle ages to the bitter end.

I imagine everyone has had their fill of micromanagement for a while

Hope you enjoyed the game, and look forward to seeing you in SGOTM7 - Ottomans AWD.

 

[jeffelammar]

The First Chapters on the Keltoi Genteel Builders

Chapter Eight - Of and Concerning the final years of the KGB

The final years of the KGB were marked by frantic competition between the houses. Each and every House spent all their effort building Statues, Shrines and just about every other type of Art and Cultural decadence possible.

One lamentable event is especially worth noting. A young page was waylayed in the mountains of India on his way to bring orders to the Armies on the front line. The orders concerned making a final thrust into the lands of Babylon to secure a big pile of rock that contained more grain than could be imagined. Unfortunately the courier never arrived with the orders, so Babylon fell to the Elephant armies of India.

This of course had little effect on the actions of the Great Houses, but did sadly slow their ability to force the populace to build monuments.

Note on the Great Houses: Due to the constant wrangling for power between the Houses, the later years saw a decline in House Deny of D. They had nobly led the KGB to many victories in war, but after doing so fell into decline and did not manage to accend to the head of the KGB again.

At the end of the first Millenium the Great House of Whomp took over the KGB. He destroyed the Iroquois and proceeded to lead the KGB to the magic mark of 1000 culture per turn.

In the 1100s The Great House of CKS gained acendency in the KGB. Not satisified with the number of places to build monuments to his family he declared war on Lizzie of the Brits. A short war ensued resulting in the final territorial aquisition of the KGB.

From the late 1100's on activities in the KGB were marked by an arguably insane devotion to the Competition. The Houses of Wanderer and Jeffelammar 'ed the people mercilessly.

Towards the end, the final Dynasty of the KGB began. A noble house known for their unruly hair took the Throne. The Head of the House Bed Head took things to a great extreme. He disbanded all military units and used them to build monuments to his greatness.

However Lord Bed Head was insane, but not inattentive. He proceeded to heavilly defend the Indian border.

Included in Lord Bed Head's insanity was a certain flair and style.

In 1325 AD he sent this command to the troops.

Thus causing the end of the KGB's quest.

The perpetual reign of the Keltoi Genteel Builders was assured in 1330 AD - 100K cultural victory with exactly 100000 culture.

Appendicies to the History of the Keltoi Genteel Builders


Appendix One: Historical Borders

Appendix Two: The Effect of the

The KGB achieved something I had never before seen. Our score curve actually trended down due to the massive whipping.

Appendix Three: The march of Culture

 

[Northern Pike]

Given its slow tech pace, our game was essentially over by the time we got Gunpowder, so this will just be an impressionistic appendix to Klarius's comprehensive first spoiler.

We learned Gunpowder by re-taking the Great Library in 930 AD. Our only military activity after this was to conclude our campaign against the English, launched to seize Lizzie's wool, by reducing them to one city. In this period we had time to develop (well, whip) the lands we had earlier taken from the Vikings and the Americans fairly well.

We won most of our victories in the game with Gallic Swordsmen--which were available to us for a long time, since we took forever to learn Feudalism--and used knights, which we hardly needed, only near the end. The principal strategic oddity of our game was that we never attacked the relatively near Iroquois, because from a fairly early date they had so many units in our territory that the prospect was completely unappetizing.

The only issues outstanding in our last few rounds were whether our immense number of ungarrisoned cities would provoke any rival into sneak-attacking us, and whether we could get our victory date under 1200 AD by sufficiently flagrant inhumanity. We forestalled any attack by the usual methods--RoP agreements, alliances against minor enemies we then protected from elimination, grossly uneven luxury deals. Relentless whipping, sustained until our last turn, brought us to 100,041 cp in 1170 AD. At one point we were concerned that we might be driven to the inartistic expedient of running negative gpt with an empty treasury, but in the event we had plenty of better financial options.

Like all the other teams, we'll remember this game mostly for the micromanagement. It seemed obvious by the end that a policy of whipping towns on the basis of their accumulated shields (watching for even multiples of ten, etc.), while it did a lot to make the interturns endurable, wasn't efficient. A city's food situation is far more relevant to the question of when to pop-rush in a game like this.

We could have improved our finish date in a couple of ways. Trying for the Pyramids and not getting them was obviously the worst-case outcome, though since I wasn't involved in that decision I won't dogmatize as to whether we should have made a better attempt or no attempt. And had we realized earlier that we were never going to come anywhere near railroads and communism, we could have put hundreds or thousands of worker-turns wasted on irrigating grasslands to better use.

Finally, thanks and congratulations to Mad-bax for another superbly conceived scenario.

 

[AlanH]

When you last caught up with the Xteam Keltoi it was 110 AD, we had just traded for Gunpowder and found out that the saltpeter was safely tucked away in places like Japan and France. We had established a second core around Beijing and were at war with the Mongols.

The war against the Mongols lasted until 410 AD, leaving them with one city. During this time the Keltoi ... the wannabe Cutlural Kings of the Entire Planet .. lost two cities in flips to Japan and India. We traded up to Physics and Metallurgy in 420 AD, and started up our own research for Military Tradition, In 450 AD, having tried peace for all of 4 turns, we'd had enough of that and needed to get some more space, and some saltpeter. We also needed to get some action going in the north to slow France, America and Babylon down. So a complex sequence of alliances and declarations saw the world in a state of armed conflict. Our initial active targets were Japan and Carthage. Iroquois and France - the owners of the Pyramids - would come later.

During the next few hundred years, by 850 AD, we took out Japan and the remnants of Mongolia, and consigned the Iroquois and Carthage to small seaside resorts. And we prepared to invade France. Meanwhile, we built cities galore and worked out how we would use Communistic pop rushing to create a cultural megalopolis.

In 980 AD General Gator 13th declared war on France and took Paris with the Pyramids, Leos and Smiths. We proceeded to expand our territory at France's expense, and in 1030 AD we revolted to Communism and started the Rush for Culture in earnest. From then on it was a micromanagement-fest. We'd been irrigating and railing every blade of grass, sod of earth and grain of sand for a while, and we had to make optimum use of all that food to build population to create more towns, more buildings, more drafted rifles. Fortunately we had six of us to do it, and each only had to take one or two turn sets of really intensive culture rush activity. We had also managed to accumulate a sizeable treasury of over 6K gold, and this stood us in good stead as our cultural maintenance costs rose.

During the last five turns General Gyathaar - normally our Cultural Attaché - had a few cliff-hanging turns when the Babylonians decided to try to put a stop to our cultural hegemony. By that time we were going too fast for them to affect the outcome, but we did lose a few towns on our borders.

Bottom line statistics:

392 towns
3095 Culture per turn
100125 culture at 1385 AD
Firaxis score - 9108
296 units, of which 184 were workers or slaves

Here's what almost 400 cities look like:

 

[Tubby Rower]

Spoiler up to Gunpowder

When we last left our underdog heros, hints of a Babylonian invasion in old Japan were rampant. As most rumors, this was true. Hammi sneak attacked us and due to our trashed rep, we weren't able to sign any alliances against the Bearded Backstabber. We managed to stem this Red Tide by only losing 3 cities. After bickering over a few cities and WWI style trench warfare peace was signed with Babylon after the entire world (except Iroquois) were at war with us. Hammi entering IA was a great incentive too.

Meanwhile, the Mongols got a little break from the Celtic conversion. But then Carthage brought a stack of Numidian Mercenaries.

Brother Bede reduced this down to

We had signed a MA with the Mongols to help with the Carthaginian threat and gave them some fur for Ugly's hat.
Carthage was pushed back, and our gallic swordsmen army pillaged the heck out of their land.

In 1300 AD, Hammi came with a stack of cavs and blood in his eye. Within the span of 2 turns we had lost 7 cities to Hammi. To stop the bleeding some of the towns most in threat of being captured was donated to Joan. An MA with Joan was signed with us giving her WM, 106gpt & 924G!! When Hammi took the new french cities, It triggered a French MPP with Abe to join the dogpile vs. Hammi. A MPP between Abe & the Viking horde allowed the blonde devils to join as well. The Mongols join Hammi and sign against us. So now we have 3 fronts (Babylon, Mongol, and Carthage). The Plan is to push Carthage, hold Babylon, and swat the Mongols that pop their head up.

Carthage was pushed to an island OCC, then the Ugly was relieved of his land and joined the big ugly tree in the sky.
Joan and Abe are tying up Hammi in the north. Peace was signed with Hammi in 1365 after infantry started showing up.

The rest of the game was a waiting game. Many Celtic citizens gave up their lives for the greater Celtic culture. Slowly, one at a time, the Babylonian cities in old Japan flipped back to us. France made inroads into the Babylonian core.

In 1580AD we became a Communist government. Culture passed 100k (+1379) on mab's turns at 1670AD but Hammi had 68k (+517). So we had the advantage but just had to wait. Hammi's culture was declining indicating that the French & Americans were getting to him. We were debating at this point to try to help take out Hammi but we didn't have the techs, or numbers to even make a dent. So we waited...and waited....and waited. in 1760 we had passed the +2k culture per turn threshold. In 1790AD we finally doubled Babylon's culture with a total of 167335 culture points accumulating +2231 per turn.

The most ironic thing is the comment from our formidable advisary. We really didn't think that the game was the best played but Hammi did.

And here is a copy of the final map of the world

 

[tao]

Team tao, SGOTM6, Final Spoiler

First spoiler is here. 4000BC - 350AD

We learn the world map from the Mongols giving them invention. Our war with Japan is over, we prepare a Palace move to former Japanese lands, and are at war with Iroquois aiming to get Salamanca with Pyramids and Sun Tzu's. In 420AD we abandon Entremont and the Palace moves to New Richborough in the center of former Japan. Two turns later we capture Salamanca.

We now have 2 cores, Pyramids for growth and Sun Tzu's for free barracks. Our cores are developed with infrastructure, while the growth in the outer corrupt areas is mainly used for pop-rushing. We continue to buy and trade techs, not to research them. Regrettably, our trade route with Japan is broken by Carthage 570AD and our reputation is gone. This requires peace re-negotiation, if we want to make per turn deals from now on.

After dealing with the Iroquois, we declare war in India 550AD and move slowly north (no war weariness in despotism) until they are destroyed 1160AD. China and the Mongols also are annihilated.

We enter Industrial Times in 840AD and start research on steam. Progress is slow and 950AD we buy it from England in peace re-neg. In 1060AD we started a pre-build for Theory of Evolution to get the important techs replaceable parts and communism. Once the AIs know the techs and the pre-build is ready, we trade for medicine, electricity (in peace deal with Vikings), scientific method and communism in 1300AD. We switch to communism. Next turn, ToE gives atomic, electronics and we can trade for replaceable parts and industrialization as well as nice gpt to sustain our communist money drain.

Now a really fast and furious pop-rushing and drafting/disbanding occurs to get necessary culture. It was amazing to see how fast culture could be accumulated (at a horrendeous prize of time spend per turn ).

1300AD: 64.938cp, +1.395cpt
1350AD: 80.816cp, +1.743cpt
1380AD: 92.822cp, + 2.182cpt
1395AD: 100.353cp, +2.751cpt

My thanks to the team and the team's big thanks to mad-bax.

 

[klarius]

Well, I played a little with Crpviewer and made a few comparison plots.

Culture per turn:

Number of cities:

Tiles per city:

 

[I. Larkin]

……………………….We capture Paris at 320 AD
GP come to some civs at 330, but we got it at 430 AD. We control French saltpeter already and Babylon killed French at 510 AD.
After that game was done, actually, the question was can we win competition? We work out following algorithm:
Brief Instruction to win the game (and probably competition).
1. We are at despotism.
2. Most of our Cities corrupted.
3. The only way to rush Improvements is poprush.
4. Food is not corrupted.
Basic idea:
1. Build as many Cities as possible (and capture some)
2. Each new City must have at least 2 food surplus at size 1 and 2 .
3. This City will build temple at turn 10 (first poprush), size 1 again.
4. After 10 turn puprush settler
5. Switch back to Library.
5. After next 15 turns: poprush musketman and the same turn poprush Library.
7. Repeat the same with Cathedral.
8. As a result we will have 8 cpt City after 40-50 turns.
Note, that for this we may have 4-5 size cities, so they may be very close to each other.

460 AD was turning point in the game The Diplomacy trick was:
1) Declare to Americans.
2) Ask Babs and English for Allianse vs Chi and Am.
3) Ask Japan to alliance vs Americans and French
4) Ask Japan to remove troops or Declare. They declare.
5) Ask Cartage, Iroques and India for Allianse vs China and Japan.
6) Kill China. All expensive MA gpt gone.
All this wars break trade routes and we get huge income from trade res and lux.
Than we make 3 major mistakes:
1) Unfortunately Japan cut our trade route with India and we lost trade reputation at 520 AD.
2) At 880 AD we lost Newton and Shakespeare. 400 Shields has gone to Military Academy.
3) Next mistake was communism. We research it ourselves and switch immediately.
Wow! Everything is corrupt.
The only use was:
1040AD - sell communism to England for 79G and 49GPT. Revolt back to despotism.
We learned Nationalism at 960 AD, that help a lot for rush uni/collosiums via disband conscripts .
We gradually continue our wars: Kill Japan and switch to Cartage. English declare to us
1190AD: that causes money problem (they paid good gpt…). Fortunately we just learnd steam power and did the rest of research with single scientist. Near the end of the game Americans declare to us. We capture few Cities before the end. Near the end we had 145 Cities. Next was Babs with 34.
Military summary:
We kill Japan, China. Destroy French and Cartage. Heavy wounded England and America. We stay at peace With Iroquois, Babylon, India and Vikings troughout the game.

We crossed the 100K mark in 1435 AD for a 1440AD win with 8097 firaxis points.