*Spoiler 3* Gotm18-Celts - End Game Submitted

[Ribannah]

Originally posted by DaveMcW
Game score was 6477, resulting in a rather disappointing Jason calculation. But some of the other posters in this thread definitely deserve a medal more than me this month.

I'd say you had a good game nonetheless, ever perfecting your 'palace switch' approach. In other months that will pay off better in terms of score. Going after the Iroquois first was a good idea, Salamanca was an excellent palace location for your purposes. Most of us went after Rome (or, in my case, Carthage).

One question though: how were you able to trade for Replaceable Parts? In none of my tech races was I ever able to trade for an industrial tech other than the free ones.

 

[DaveMcW]

By researching Electricity immediately and donating it to the AIs, I have 10 other techs to research before I have to start on Replaceable Parts. So even at min research the AIs can get it in time.

 

[Zwingli]

2 City Conquest: Part 3 of 3

Part 1 Part2
Ancient Age Middle Age

In the previous section, England was the only remaining civ besides the Keltoi. After France was eliminated in 1988, I put a good portion of my tanks and artillery onto transports as quickly as possible and sent them toward the English homeland.

During the war against France, I had donated some costal improvements to England which were now an ideal landing site . In 1992 England declared war due to a failed spy planting, and the forces embarked onto the fortress. Hastings (with Universal Sufferage) was destroyed in 1993, but English culture remained in control of the entire island so the tanks were unable to be repaired. The now empty transport stack retreated North seeking the safty of the small but growing Keltic fleet at Alesia. The undefended transports were massacarred on the way, and only 2 battered vessels out of the original 9 would eventually survive.

The English couterattack was significant from land, sea, and air. Bombers pounded the improvements at Alesia, and a large stack of tanks approached the city from the East. A pitched battle occured West of Alesia between the English and Keltic fleets, and the use of naval bombardment allowed the smaller Keltic fleet to survive. I had retained enough tanks and artillery on the main continent to wipe out the invading tank stack in 1 turn (using the blitz ability), and the fall of Cambridge a few turns later destroyed the English airforce and much of their navy on the ground.

1997 AD

As of 1997 the English counterattack had been defeated at Cambridge and Alesia (red circles) and the island invasion force had made a successful landing in England (blue circle). The force comparison in 1997 shows that the Keltic and English Armys were now about evenly matched, with a slight advantage in naval power for the Keltoi. At this time also began the siege of London by the invasion stack from a nearby mountain.

This force was unable to heal without Battlefield Medicine, and now lacked the offensive punch to take London directly, so I dug into the mountain and shelled London while holding out for reinforcements. Artillery out of London actually returned fire, and English tanks attacked the stack making me somewhat concerned that it would be wiped out before reinforcements arrived. The English isle was dotted with metropolis sized cities because they had been joining all the foreign slaves I had sold them into the population (London was especially multicultural).

2007 AD

The Keltic Navy along with the last 2 transports fought their was south against the multitude of English submarines while the continental army systematically removed English presence from the main landmass. With their access to continental resources cut off and their oil supply bombarded, the English could no longer counterattack the siege force and reinforcements arrived on the English island in time. In 2007 AD the remnant of London was destroyed and the damaged tanks could finally be repaired. England continued to resist from her remaining cities, but they were surrounded by the ragged Keltic fleet and could not escape. Their last city was destroyed in 2020 AD resulting in conquest victory.

Power Histogram

Built in score: 631
Brennus the Foolish (Yeah!)
34 Years avg. Military service
Keltic Territory
The world

That's the lowest score in my Hall of Fame. Maybe it will get the conquest Phillibuster .

 

[Shillen]

Just amazing Zwingli. You definitely deserve some kind of award. I think a Zwingli Award should be made in your honor. Most unique and impressive game of the month?

 

[Ribannah]

@ Zwingli!

Originally posted by DaveMcW
By researching Electricity immediately and donating it to the AIs, I have 10 other techs to research before I have to start on Replaceable Parts. So even at min research the AIs can get it in time.

Of course, but in my games they always use that time to research Communism (at best). Maybe the fact that Greece didn't get Nationalism made the difference here. What do you think?

 

[alexman]

The AI places a huge value on Replaceable parts (even more than on Nationalism). So it would be extremely unlikely that an AI civ that can research Replaceable parts would go for Communism, especially in PTW with the Guerilla enabled.

Usually the AI goes for Communism because it places a relatively low value on the prerequisites of Rep. Parts.

 

[Ribannah]

Thanks Alexman.

Do you have more info on research values as seen by the AI in PTW? Are there any differences between vanilla Civ3 and PTW, or between patches, that you know of?

 

[alexman]

Yes, there are differences in the AI valuation of techs every time you add a new building, unit, wonder, or ability. PTW has made many such changes (by adding airfields, outposts, mace and rambo, commercial docks, the stock exchange, the internet, et cetera).

But Cracker will crack the whip if we continue this here much longer, so take a look (and please comment) at the related article in the strategy articles forum.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Alexman, I was just about to post that link, but I do have a question (and it relates directly to the GOTM).

Unless I'm mistaken, since mobilization is disabled (because of the exploit) and the mace and rambo units aren't in the GOTM, would that not change AI priorities more than what we would see in a normal game?

 

[alexman]

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
Unless I'm mistaken, since mobilization is disabled (because of the exploit) and the mace and rambo units aren't in the GOTM, would that not change AI priorities more than what we would see in a normal game?

Sure, the AI is less likely to go for Nationalism in the GOTM, but it's still quite highly rated because of Conscription and the availability of an attacker/defender that doesn't require resources. An AI that can complete Nationalism in 20 turns would normally place a value of 87 on this tech, compared to 79 for the GOTM. Compare that to 30 for Steam Power.

Rambo also changes things because he's an attacker/defender that doesn't require resources. But Rep. Parts are very valuable to the AI even without him (because of Infantry and double Worker speed). Again, for a 20 turn completion estimate, Rep. Parts are valued at 447 with rambo, but only 115 without him. Still, that's much higher than any other industrial age tech, so the AI will still likely go for that tech as soon as it becomes available.

Mace is an attacker who requires resources, so his effect on the AI tech preference is quite small.

OK, I promise, no more AI tech preferences talk from me in this thread!

 

[Txurce]

Zwingli, congratulations again. As you might imagine, I have some questions. The big one is, what did you do to avoid casualties? Your artillery-to-tank ratio gives me one indication - I assume that, whenever possible, you softened up every target that a tank attacked. But how did your ships hang in there before you leveled the playing field at Cambridge? My guess is superior concentration of forces - the Brits were spread out all around the pangaea map, while your swabbies were all there for the big face-off.

 

[Hurricane]

Well, what can you say... Amzing, Zwingli. :worshp: :worshp: :worshp:

I also have a question. Earlier in the game, when some of the AI's were getting very strong (the Japs for example) it seemed like they actually stopped expanding. Do you think this was because of OCN constraints? If yes, does this mean that the AI in fact never will win a domination/conquest victory?

 

[alexman]

Originally posted by Hurricane
Earlier in the game, when some of the AI's were getting very strong (the Japs for example) it seemed like they actually stopped expanding. Do you think this was because of OCN constraints? If yes, does this mean that the AI in fact never will win a domination/conquest victory?

Yes, that is correct. After it reaches the OCN, the AI starts razing cities instead of keeping them, and it doesn't settle new sites unless it really needs the resources. As a result, I have never seen the AI win by Domination under standard rules, although it could conceivably happen on a tiny map.

There is an easy way to improve this AI behavior by modding the rules (increase the OCN and reduce the percentage of OCN for all difficulty levels to keep corruption constant), although this would result in an increase of the required number of cities for the FP.

 

[Txurce]

I've never seen the AI come close to winning by conquest, either. While this could be an outgrowth of the OCN limit - it just gets less aggressive - I always assumed that it simply wasn't good enough... particularly when an overseas invasion is required.

 

[pilferman]

Well, I finished. As I have mentioned elsewhere, it was hastily completed. Because of my many time constraints, I was forced to choose the quickest method of victory (time-wise) if I were going to finish by Christmas. In my mind, that would be the spacerace. (I know, Diplomatic is faster, but my early warmongering destroyed that hope). Here is a screenshot of my finishing time:

22 hours is pretty fast, especially for this kind of map. Perhaps that's why my score is mediocre at best. I was expecting that, though. On the other hand, given all the freetime in the world I still don't think I could have achieved Shillen's unreal 132+ hours or Bamspeedy's sickening 330+ cities/85 hours. Maybe that's why I'll never have a score of 21,000+. I finished in 1752 with a score of 6049.

Here is a shot of my final map:

Due to time constraints, I was unable to continue my warmongering for most of my game. I pretty much had to stop after I took the English. The only exceptions are the Egyptians (a small, backward people) and the Aztecs who declared war on me. I let the AI beat up on the Aztecs, since I knew I wouldn't finish if I did.

I know there are 2 more playing days left, but if I didn't finish today, it wasn't going to happen. I planned to submit on Saturday, but my game continued to crash every few turns. Next week I should have plenty of time to take on the world in #19.

 

[Zwingli]

Re: Txurce

The English fleet was indeed spread out all over the ocean, with a large portion of it concentrating on destroying my undefended transports in the South. My navy therefore had local superiority against the stream of incoming English ships, and could use bombardment to keep down on the losses. Damaged ships are just as good at bombardment as healthy ships, so even when the fleet had taken a beating it was still close to maximum effectiveness. I also had the advantage of a nearby safe port at Alesia, while the closest English port at Cambridge was very much in danger. If the English had shown up with a focused, overwhelming fleet I could have always retreated into Alesia for safety. On land, I ended up with mostly elite tanks which won 85-98% of their battles against injured infantry.

Of course I still took occasional losses to my fleet and tank forces, but Alesia was able to produce 1 destroyer per turn (after rushing a Euro-Sword and switching to destroyer), and Entremont could produce 1 tank per turn (by first rushing a worker, then producing its natural 93spt to complete the tank). Still, If the English had managed to retain naval superiority and prevent reinforcements from arriving on their island, they might have been able to hold out much longer, or even destroy the siege stack, capturing 30 or so artillery.

 

[Txurce]

Zwingli, I think I understand how you rushed tanks, since you weren't researching, and so had the gold to pay retail for a Euro-Sword each turn. But by "bombardment," I usually think of shelling the coast. What is it that you were doing against the English ships with your damaged ones?

 

[Zwingli]

I was using damaged ships like seaborn artillery: directly striking enemy vessels to reduce their hitpoints using the 'b' bombardment key. This greatly increased the success rate when the undamaged (Keltic) ships attacked the English ships.

 

[Renata]

@ Zwingli: Truly awesome game. And very very cool.


Whee, I finally finished! Just submitted. And while as always there's room for improvement, I am very very happy with my game, as it's my fastest spacerace by about 30 turns.

In the last spoiler thread, I was in the late 700s AD and a turn from getting steam power. My plan was to trade for military tradition once someone got it, then go take out a civ or two (i.e Carthage and Iroquois) in the hopes of it reducing my research times. It wound up taking a rather long time for this to happen, but once I finally had my cavs the two wars went well, with the only side-effect that the MPPs I had to get to arrange the Iroquois war to my favor wound up starting a series of world wars which never really ended and which subsequently got me sneak-attacked twice. But no major consequences; in fact one of the wars prompted me to take on England, which I had decided to ignore in the interests of time. So by the end of the game I had my own original starting territory, plus the Roman, the Iroquois, the Carthaginian and the English. Plus a couple of Chinese cities and Toyama, the original Japanese barb peninsula city that'd effectively taken Japan out of the game way back when. At the very end of the game, with 3 turns left on Satellites, France (who'd been my loyal allies lo these many years), backstabbed me and declared war. I bribed the rest of the world into alliances on my side and then pretty much ignored them for the rest of the game. Well, except for the Greek border city that the French had been occupying for a while and the rest of the French possessions on the barb peninsula.

I averaged a little under 5 turns per tech for the industrial age, I think, starting in 700 AD and ending in about 1300 AD. (Greece got medicine, leaving me with steam power at six turns, darn them.) If I had it to do over again I'd have switched to democracy as soon as I had it; I wasn't expecting it to take so long to be able to trade for military tradition. That might have saved a turn or two. Similarly, I skipped sanitation until I could trade for it - this move I probably broke about even on, although it's hard to say. I did notice a decrease in my research time as soon as I had hospitals in my two science wonder cities and had joined workers to build them to size 20. I didn't think of avoiding replaceable parts; I'll have to keep that in mind for if I do this again.

In the modern age, Greece got rocketry; I made a mistake by not researching computers first myself (I researched it *third*!), because my sleep-fogged brain had totally forgotten about SETI and research labs. Once I had SETI in Antium and six or seven research labs built, the turns per tech dropped to four per and stayed there permanently. So that little bit of brain fog probably cost me about 2 turns.

I'd like to put in a screen shot or two, but I have no time. Even if it's not in DaveMcW league I'm very happy with my launch: 1485 AD, 5878 pts pre-Jason.

Renata

 

[Ronald]

Hi Zwingli,

You finally managed to conquer the world with 2 cities! Congratulations for this most interesting game.
I am curious with what kind of special award cracker will come up to honor this game. It should definitely ensure you a prominent place in the pantheon of heroes.

Ronald