*Spoiler 3* Gotm18-Celts - End Game Submitted

[cracker]

Again take a few seconds to read this introduction carefully to make certain you DO NOT run afoul of the divided spoiler rules.

This is the THIRD and final spoiler thread to support discussion of Gotm18-Celts.

The objective of these divided spoiler threads is to provide a little organization to the discussion that will help more people find the topics that they are interested in without having to rummage through the entire game discussion.

Help us to keep the things filed in the appropriate places: ancient age and up to and full world map, middle ages, or end game.

I encourage every player to practice and master the process of posting links to the important previous reports of game progress that you may have posted for each of the three major phases of your game up to this point. If you need help with this process feel free to ask and I am certain that some of the more experienced players can help you.

The test for access to this spoiler thread is simple:

• you must have submitted your final save file from playing the game.

You may discuss any information from the game but if you are posting reports of events and/or activities in the Early or Middle portion of the game, those reports should be placed in the correct spoiler for that time segment of the game.

Big picture issues like how your overall strategy helped you to win the game or how early mistakes may have eventually led to your downfall would be nice items to discuss in this thread.

Hope everyone has had fun with this game and that you are looking forward to Gotm19-Ottomans!!

 

[mad-bax]

I went for a 100K win right from the start, but didn't even begin to build culture until just b4 the expansion phase was completed in 530AD. The only other Civ that could cause me a problem from a cultural point of view were the Aztecs. I was surprised at this in view of the presence of Japan and France, but neither performed well. It became clear fairly early on that I would reach 100K b4 anyone else reached 50 so late wars were not necessary.

Once Railroads were down I just kept a defensive team on the spear/MI upgrade path, built culture and increased city density.

I convinced myself that I needed the Hoover Dam, so I researched up to electronics and beyond. Stupid But eventually I did turn off research and use the cash to buy culture. Again, I did this poorly because instead of short rushing I just paid full price (after a couple of turns). At the end of the game there were still a dozen cities without either a colloseum or a Uni.
This is a testament to my incompetence.

Early mistakes/decisions left me without JS Bachs or the Oracle, and because I didn't expand to the extent that others have I didn't capture them either.

Poor combat technique produced a mere 5 great leaders that produced various wonders, and I handbuilt some too.

In short, I am disgusted with myself. Here are two minimaps from my game at 530AD and the turn b4 the end at 1600.

530AD

1600AD

I will get better

 

[RufRydyr]

QSC Early Maps
A little about the middle

Seems my timing with the spoiler is great. Just finished yesterday. 100k cultural in 1792ad. [8686 Firaxis points, 7064 Jason points.] This is my first cultural win.

I started with the goal of a non domination win, but changed my mind repeatedely. As I was getting deep into the years, the 100k was the latest best date, so I went for that. I could have won by any of the conditions.

In the later ages I kept getting attacked, but then I'd sign alliances and then encircle a couple of cities and Great Leader farm. It was fun.

I must say that the Internet provided a huge cultural bonus with 200+ cities. The last 50k of culture just racked up like a slot machine. Ding Ding Ding.

In retrospect, I should have attacked earlier. I declared war on Japan early and signed alliances to try to slow the tech pace, but should have been more agressive. All of these civs had good ancient era UUs. I also went to horsemen to cav path. I should researched iron, built a bunch of warriors in unconnected cities, periodically upgraded them with gold and declared war on everybody. I also wasted too much time on research late in the game. I built like 8 spaceships parts. I should have set science to zero and used the gold for even more growth and happiness.

 

[Shillen]

As shown in the last spoiler I had the Japanese and the Greeks down to 1 city in 1365AD. There was a reason I left both of them alive. I had wanted to go for a diplomatic victory like SirPleb. The Japanese had conquered all of Egypt and I never touched them. This is what remained of Egypt after Japan was done with them:

That settler was bugged or something, because it never moved for hundreds of years. Egypt was polite with me at this point.

It didn't work out though, because I didn't take as much care as SirPleb. I razed a few cities and that dropped Cleo down to annoyed. Then I accidentally starved one of her cities after capturing it from the Japanese and she went to furious. I razed lots more cities after that point. I kept her around anyway in case her attitude came back up, or if MPP's would make the difference. This is why I kept Japan around though. I knew she would vote for me over Japan, as long as I could get her up to polite. I kept Greece around just for the free modern age tech.

In 1385 I switched to democracy. I disbanded almost all of my military units to reduce support costs. I guess Cleo decided that was a good opportunity to drop her settler down in the middle of my territory, declaring war in the process. But that's not even the weird thing. Look closely at her city the turn after she settled in my territory:

Somehow she had a spearman, 2 longbowmen (1 visible), and her city was size 2! The settler was originally unescorted and there was no time to rush any units. Anyway I destroyed her because I didn't think I'd ever get her attitude up.

Let's see, I turned research off after replaceable parts and scientific method. I researched atomic theory in 40 turns, since it's basically as expensive as modern age techs are. After those 40 turns I had pretty much finished rushing everything so I turned research back on and worked my way towards ecology and genetics. In 1826AD I built ToE, which snagged me miniaturization and genetics. Longevity actually turned out to be a great wonder for score due to cities growing a full size larger than they should have.

I achieved cultural victory in 2050AD with 100001 culture. I know it's been done before but it looks better than getting a domination or conquest victory. I had a settler ready and I had a stack of MA outside Greece's last city so I could have gotten those if I wanted. By the time I thought to do a 20k culture victory it was too late. I think Entremont finished with around 14k culture.

Other than that I had some fun with carriers and airplanes to ease the boredom of milking.

Every one of those carriers was filled to capacity with stealth bombers and stealth fighters. I also built around 100 helicopters. And I built an MI for each city for the hell of it (I had disbanded all defenses earlier).

 

[el_kalkylus]

Pictures of Ancient age. Just press 'next' for next picture.

Pictures of Middles age. Just press 'next' for next picture.

Pictures of my end game. Just press 'next' for next picture.

Overview of all my pictures of this game.

I had a domination victory with low score, but I had fun playing the game. Throughout the game I had 14 great leaders. I could research pretty fast too, and could probably have launched a spaceship around 1530 ad or so.

My overall tactic was to use the upgrade strategies. Horsemen were upgraded to knights, and cannons to artillery.

Other civilizations often helped me to destroy an enemy. I couldn't have done it without them.

 

[LKendter]

Originally posted by RufRydyr
Seems my timing with the spoiler is great. Just finished yesterday. 100k cultural in 1792ad.

Unreal - I will do the full post tonight as I don't have write-ups with me, but you beat me by 1 or 2 turns. I also went 100K and ended close to 1800AD.

 

[Yndy]

Originally posted by Shillen
I guess Cleo decided that was a good opportunity to drop her settler down in the middle of my territory, declaring war in the process.

Normally the AI would plop their last settler in the middle of your territory if they would found no free place to settle. And they do get several units when they found their 'first' town.

 

[Shillen]

This wasn't a respawned civ. Also the settler sat there for 3-400 years when there was TONS of available space to settle. I had razed a ton of cities, she could have easily settled outside my territory. That also doesn't explain why the city was immediately size 2. Unless one of the free units was a worker and she joined it to the city.

 

[a space oddity]

Wow, you guys all did well.

I was way behind in tech almost all the game (after a well enough start upto 1000BC). I missed out on all the wonders except Sun Tsu's (which in itself is very helpful on a pangea map). This being my first Monarch game (with GOTM17 my first Regent win) I expected to loose, but being ahead in score I tried to stick around long enough to try for either diplo or space race win.
I did not build the UN, but I dogpiled the Aztec who did, so they never called the vote (phew).
The Aztec were second in my game so it was a long hard war, in which I needed to go back to monarchy. It made very clear how much that slows down your research pace. One good aspect was that the AI also was slowed down a bit. England was not so much hit and stayed in democracy all the time and got very rich.
At one point I captured the Aztec city with the UN, but the vote came and went undecided. After that the city flipped back to the Aztec who had *one* city left at that time and the city was immediately captured by neoCartago , who where part of the alliance. They called the vote but again it was undecided (I had nothing to bribe the other civs with).
Because of the long warring and the religous trait of the Celts I gained in the tech race and decided to try and get to synth.fibers first. I succeeded and held it back for a bit (the others had the other space techs already). It took some careful planning (I had spies in all capitals), but when the time was right I traded Fibers for Laser and switched the pre-building city to the last spacecraft element. I had the three last components finished simultaniously and beat the AI by just a couple of turns!

The clock hadn't stop ticking so the year this came to pass was 1908AD.

Still, my first Monarch win, no complains from me! My learning curve is shaped by cracker and his fellow GOTM staff, thanks guys

 

[Moonsinger]

Finally, my Alesia got the 20K Culture in 1758 AD.[dance]

During the last 50 turns, my world was turnning into desert at the rate of about 10 tiles per turn. That was exactly what happened after I rushed over 200 hospitals and no mass transit. However, with the Longevity, my people were born faster than they died. I ended up with 7285.1 happy citizens and 1082.3 specialists.

 

[RufRydyr]

Originally posted by a space oddity

At one point I captured the Aztec city with the UN, but the vote came and went undecided. After that the city flipped back to the Aztec who had *one* city left at that time and the city was immediately captured by neoCartago , who where part of the alliance. They called the vote but again it was undecided (I had nothing to bribe the other civs with).

I would have abandoned the city with the UN in it. That would erase the fear of losing a UN vote.

 

[RufRydyr]

Originally posted by Moonsinger
Finally, my Alesia got the 20K Culture in 1758 AD.[dance]

During the last 50 turns, my world was turnning into desert at the rate of about 10 tiles per turn. That was exactly what happened after I rushed over 200 hospitals and no mass transit. However, with the Longevity, my people were born faster than they died. I ended up with 7285.1 happy citizens and 1082.3 specialists.

Congrats!

I had several hospitals and no mass transits. So, there was lots and lots of yellow triangles and 3-6 polluted squares/turn. I only had 2 tiles turn, though! I'm on PTW. Wonder if that made a difference?

 

[Xevious]

Finished mine a couple days ago winning by diplomacy in 1480AD with 5106 in game score. I was playing PTW and saw ZERO culture flips in any direction, which is quite surprising since I had numerous Roman towns completely enclosed and they had less than 1/3 of my culture for much of the game.

I probably could have won this sooner, but I was playing peaceful unless attacked so I was at the mercy of the AI until they attacked me. As mentioned in my Spoiler 2 Post Carthage attacked me first, just before I discovered Democracy, giving me a golden age with 18 or so turns in democracy. This gave me a huge boost.

1100AD, couple turns before France attacks.

France attacked me next, and I allied with Greece and Rome again, plus Japan and China. Aztecs were trading with them and wouldn't ally. I worked my way across the top of the map wiping France away, with Rome and Greece grabbing a few tundra cities too. Eventually France was gone. I was using cavalry and infantry during this war. I'll discuss tech in a minute, but for now picture my workers railing behind the front lines connecting the French cities as fast we took them. The other civs were just getting rails going during this war while most of my area was railed already.

1325AD, one turn after Japan attacked.

Japan was the last one to attack me, and perhaps the most difficult. I again allied Greece and Rome (my third war with them as allies) and China and eventually brought Iroquois into it as well. Egypt had an MPP with Japan so they were on the other side, but they were much weaker and I only saw a handful of their troops. With the help of the allies I managed to completely remove Japan from the map, with the help of tanks towards the end. Japan had infantry showing up near the start of the war which is a large part of why it took so long. I started using Moonsinger's settler/artillery strategy about midway through and that help immensely. I had a stack of about 20 artillery and it really works wonders to take the infantry down in points. It was less than 15 turns after this war that I won the game.

1475AD turn before win.

As far as tech progress goes this game, I started out with 4 warriors exploring which allowed me to pop some huts and meet all the civs quickly for trades. I also did a healthy amount of research on my own. I was never behind in tech, and shortly into the middle ages took a lead and never lost it. I started doing tech for gpt deals with other civs which paid for my maint and unit costs allowing me to research at 100% for most fo the game. The only time it came down was for bouts of war weariness or the need for cash to rush a few things. By soaking up gold from Greece, Rome, China and Aztecs (and France before they were gone) I kept the opponent tech rates slowed down. I used tech to buy my luxes to. At the end of the game I only had 7 luxes under my control; I still had to get silk from Aztecs. Late industrial age tech was at 5 turns and fission took 7 turns. I did some HEAVY micro managing for the last few techs (flight, radio, fission) to increase science output and shave a turn off these techs. I was pushing for diplo win most of the game so after the last war I just about stopped all production, and shifted as many citizens to science in the corrupted towns.

I had at least 6 great leaders in this game. One was used to jump my Palace to Lyons (just east of Paris) early during the Japan War. This was obviously a balanced jump because my income only changed by 1. But it did allow my infrastructure to grow much quicker out there. 2 of these leaders built armies, the rest went to wonders (including universal sufferage). The last one came at the end of the Japanese war, and I was 3 techs away from finishing fission, I estimated about 16 turns and my prebuild for the UN wasn't going to be done in time so I saved the last leader to rush it.

I hand built TOE, taking Atomic and Electronics (because they were the most expensive and I was trying to get to Fission as fast as I could). I also built Hoover, but not right away because I didn't have any factories by the time I finished TOE.

Much of my military was cash rushed during the French and Japanese wars. I also discovered something I hadn't thought about before. I've always just rushed a unit when I needed one and I happened to notice that since it fills the shield box, I lose all the production of one turn. So I would rush something else that when added to the shield production of the city, would get my desired unit the next turn. So if I'm going for infantry (90 shields) and I have a city with 40 uncorrupted shields, I can rush a Gaelic Sword (50 shields) and switch to infantry which will finish the next turn, saving me 40 shields of cash rush. I could slap myself for not finding out about this sooner (in this game and all the games I've played up until now). For a town with 40 shields you can get an infantry in 2 turns and only have to cash rush 10 of them. For 30 shield cities I sold off the granary so I could use that for the rush. I only built a couple hospitals dues to my tight build pattern so once my cities got to 12 I didn't need them anymore.

I apologize for not having many dates, I have very few notes for most of the middle ages on to the end. The last war was very draining for me as I'm not used to having to manage a large number of units each turn. I tend to play a peaceful game and don't fight much, but I've noticed you don't get a high GOTM score unless you help yourself to some neighboring lands. I can't imagine what it must be like to milk a game. I think it would drive me nuts.

 

[a space oddity]

Originally posted by RufRydyr


I would have abandoned the city with the UN in it. That would erase the fear of losing a UN vote.

That would have made sure *no-one* wins diplo, including me...
At that point I feared it was the only way I could win.

 

[RufRydyr]

Some more about my game:

Most of the territory I picked up came after other civs did sneak attacks on me or from agressive cultural expansion. I would build a city on the border, rush a temple, and then repeat when my border expanded 1 or 2 tiles into their territory. Although I was just under the domination limit for the last 100 years or so and was abandoning ice towns for grass towns, I could have been more agressive. I let the AIs get too strong. The tech pace was too slow, too.

Here's a minimap from my end submit in 1792AD:

 

[Vlad Dracula]

I got smoked this was my first game on anything but chieftan.My goal was to hang in as long as i could and hope the other civ's killed each other.I outlasted China ,Neo-Carthage ,Japan,and the Iriquois.I lost in 1916 to Rome but it did not say how.I watched the whole endgame video and Alexander said "All your base are belong to us" so gremlin or whoever posted the thread about that was right

 

[dales]

Was I the only person who noticed, at any time, the Francish Axe Throwers?

 

[LKendter]

970 AD to 1310 AD - is the continuing phony French war from the previous post. It ends with France a non-player.

1010 AD to 1300 AD- is the phony Aztec war. I get a chance to kill an Aztec Settler in the barbaric wastes. This will qualify as participating in the war. We get our FIRST leader. Of course, by appearing in the barbaric wasteland, he will take a long time to get somewhere useful. We get the Chinese to declare war on the Aztecs.

1060 AD to 1260 AD - the Iroquois war begin. I signed peace with Rome that includes an alliance vs. the treacherous Iroquois. I add China to the Iroquois dog pile. It will be meaningless, but England joins the Iroquois against us. I introduce the Iroquois to the joy of Cavalry. We get our second leader that builds the military academy. I sign peace with the England, and get them to ally with us vs. the Iroquois. We capture Bach's from the Iroquois. The war ends with the death of the Iroquois. The only bad part of the war is that China got the incense city. However, I won't argue with a permanent source of wines.

1140 AD to 1265 AD - is the second Roman war, what I did not need. The Iroquois sign peace with Rome sooner then I expected, tripping round 2. Rome declares war on Carthage, which is utterly meaningless, as they will not pass through our territory. They do the same silliness vs. Japan. We capture Magellan's Voyage from Rome. The war ends with the death of the Romans. We have a permanent source of Ivory.

1295 AD to 1410 AD - is the only Carthage war. I have feared this for a while, and did start massing troops along their borders. One of the border cities is razed, and we lose a few workers the first turn. I have to sign the monster Japan into an alliance to hope to pull their troops away from my border. This proves my theory that the AI feels obliged to start a war just as factories are about to come on-line. At 1370 AD our leader provides Suffrage for all our people. At the end my war Carthage is crippled with just 2 cities. Japan destroys them just two turns later. France is destroyed near the end of this time frame.

1460 AD to 1615 AD - is the first Japan war. They are a monster, and must be stopped. I set up a major dog pile, and drag the following civs into the war: Egypt, China and England. The only civ I don't bother with is one city Aztecs. At this point Japan is a joke and a non-threat.

1695 AD marks the passing of Japanese.

1735 AD marks the passing of the Aztecs.

1764 AD to 1792 AD - the nuisance Egypt war. Egypt declares war on me. At this point the game is won, so this gains me absolutely nothing. In fact, it is actually dangerous as I am going for 100K and any lost culture building will slow down the final game turn. It also forces artillery that was being disband for shields to be built for actually military. I feel obligated to introduce Egypt to a brand new concept - tank S.O.D. The war only ends when the world acknowledges the superior Celtic culture.



=======================================

Cultural countdown -
30 AD - We have a mere 928 in culture. However, even that low amount is enough to blow away most civs except Japan and France.

510 AD - We still only have 2,614 in culture. I am beginning to wonder how long 100K will take. The good news is a lot of cultural buildings are coming on-line during the GA.

750 AD - We are up to 5,341 in culture. We have all the former Greek cities building culture. We will clearly need to destroy a few more civs, and get the barb wasteland under our control.

1,010 AD - We are now at 9,803 in culture.

1255 AD - We are now at 15,655 in culture. I must admit it is taking longer then I thought to build. Of course, when we hit the doubling point for many of the early buildings it should speed up. In addition, we have all those new Roman and Iroquois cities that will build culture soon.

1400 AD - We are up to 25,850 in culture and gaining 403 a turn. We are looking at a win in 1963AD (before the doubling effect for some buildings. I still need to get a lot more buildings in place to get a reasonable end date.

1500 AD - The culture count is up to 34,881 and gaining 547 a turn. There are not a lot of civs left to compete with us. The rough estimate for the 100K year is now at 1866 AD.

1600 AD - The culture count is up to 47,548 and gaining 733 a turn. The main cultural threat is now Egypt. I don't understand why England still does not admire our culture with how few cities he has. The rough estimate for the 100K year is now at 1830 AD. I am already starting to see diminishing returns for addition cultural buildings. A 100K win won't occur much before 1800 AD.
It just blows me away that the Jason score target is 1345AD for this type of win.

1700 AD - The culture count is up to 65,405 and gaining 976 a turn. We have hit the required admiration from all civs, so it is just a question of hitting 100K. The current rough ETA is 1800AD, so we should end in the late 1700s time frame. You know you are close when you start building artillery just to disband it for 20 shields to get one more building.

 

[Smirk]

Originally posted by Shillen
This wasn't a respawned civ.

Technically it is since she had no other cities.
This actually happened to me before that a civ I just destroyed had a settler nearby, settled intantly, then with those free units took back the city I just took. I must have went all out with the attack since it was their last, not thinking they would come back from the grave and get revenge.

 

[WoundedKnight]

A fun game. Finished in 1690 AD, spaceship victory, 7077 Firaxis points. I enjoyed getting to play with modern armor to roll through the Aztecs and Chinese. My civ productivity near the end was over 2350 megatons, which is the most I've had in a civ game from scratch. I definitely liked the large map corruption equivalent on a standard map size as it helped cut down the wait between turns.

WoundedKnight.