*Spoiler 3* Gotm19-Ottomans - End Game Submitted

[Green Light]

Originally posted by Darkness
@Dave: Wow!! How many leaders did you get during your game? From your post in this thread it looks like a lot! At least 10!

I only had four in my game...

I had 0 leaders, so dont cry yet
Built the FP by hand stone by stone in Carthage, imagine the time it took.

 

[Darkness]

OK, you're right...
I'll stop crying now and I don't even want to imagine how log building that FP took (about 200 turns? , or did you manage to get WLTKD and get that number down a bit? )

 

[Gen. Maximus]

Got only four leaders in my game, my first leader was killed after my swordman who generated the leader died in a defensive battle all in the same turn. The Sipahi hordes generated 3 leaders within 15 turns time frame!

 

[Ribannah]

The start of our Industrial Ages cam shortly after we made peace with Carthage. The world at that time:

210 AD

The next turn, Murad I built Newton's University in Sogut and started the Ottoman Golden Age. This allowed us to research the Industrial techs in 4 turns each right from the start, and we were able to keep the pace until the very end. Unfortunately the free tech was indeed Nationalism which set us back 4 turns.

In 390 AD Rome came up with Military Tradition. We immediately upgraded our Knights (we had 10) to Sipahi in our foothold city on the 4-civ continent, and started our Spanish campaign.

The opposition was pathetic, mostly Spearmen and Archers, and in 450 AD Spain was no more.

The Sipahi were shipped back, and Carthage was next - the 20 turns of peace were over, after all. The Carthagians had some Knights and many Longbowmen. They fought hard but to no avail. During the war we got two Great Leaders: one immediately built Universal Suffrage and the other was kept to complete the Hoover Dam.

Once again the tireless Sipahi boarded ship and in 590 AD we launched our attack on India. They had Riflemen, a few Cavalry and even some War Elephants, so we had some losses, but not many. The Ottomans started on Infantry already and India was rightly afraid to attack those.

While we were dealing with India, suddenly Roman forces approached Cadiz (on the island east of Rome) and refused to leave, so we had to fight on a second front!

Alliances with Egypt and China were signed and these two nations remained our friends for the rest of the game. We landed on the Roman continent only to find them with many Infantry. But our initial attack on Brundisium succeeded nonetheless and this brought the Ivory under Ottoman control, to counter the increasing war weariness.

In 740 AD, we took the last of the Indian cities and could now concentrate on Rome. We grabbed two more cities and made peace when the alliances ran out, as we were nearing the domination threshold.

Five turns later it was decision time. The Theory of Evolution was completed to give us the final Industrial tech (Flight), the obligatory Rocketry, and a choice of another Modern tech with a prebuild (palace) ready for a Wonder of the World, possibly the UN, and our fifth and final Great Leader standing by for good measure.

Gifting enough cities to Rome would surely win us the votes of China and Egypt for an early (800 AD) Diplo win!

However, since it appeared that the techs would keep coming in 4 turns, I decided to play on and chose Computers instead of Fission. Next turn the SETI Program was finished in Entremont (our FP location), as well as many research labs, and we managed a 4-turn research for the cheapest Modern tech (Ecology) at 100% science.

Form then on it was easy going, but I kept micro-managing for a few extra points. In 1110 AD we discovered The Laser and founded 3 new cities on the edges of the empire. I was hoping for a new UN vote, too (there had been votes in 920 AD and 1020 AD) but the council didn't convene, so it was a two-way victory of Space Race with Domination on the side.

1120 AD

The Ottoman Jason score is 5 figures. Checking the possible early diplo win showed that I had played an extra 32 turns for just a handful of points due to the new curve. So I probably made the right decision not to continue for a 15th century 100K culture victory which was easily possible despite the fact that we never built any religious buildings until the very end when Sogut got a Hospital!

 

[ltcoljt]

Ribannah,

Aargg, didn't you beat the best date you scurvy knave!

Okay, I am finally done with a space race victory in my second GOTM submission. Better than my first in GOTM #17 where I finished around 27th with a base score of around 2700 points, a launch at 1776. That was a reagent level game.

This one was better played. Aimed for space race and stuck to it, though clearly conquest or domination would have been much easier and would probably scored as well.

I played this as a paced milk as you go game. At the end of the last spoiler I was headed to relieve Spain of some luxuries. This was done quick as a wink. The Sipahi were so strong I should have kept going but I stuck to the game plan and filled in with towns to max score. I had bypassed Rome and of course they declared forcing me to go and take them out while leaving some defense on the big continent. I had to take out the remnants of the Celts and Carthage on that land mass as well.

Then I moved back and took out the Chinese. India had been eaten long before so this left me at the domination limit with Egypt intact. I nursed them along in the hope of getting a tech from them but the end result was only shaving a lone turn off fission. Oh, well....

Clearly my early game min research strat cost me a ton of turns plus whatever tricks the top players do to get do so fast. I managed to get out at 1520 with a base score of 5349, Firaxis score of 7899, and Jason at 9514 if I figured it correctly.

Not so bad really. A lot better than my first game.

One of the hurdles I had to clear was to stop thinking as I have in playing SMAC PBEM or SMAC SP fast transcend games. Those games were never played for score. I have found that playing for score is counterintuitive when you approach it from my background.

All I feel I need to do now is get the lard out of my arse in the very early game, easier said than done, especially in view of a diety game coming up next month. I have won exactly one diety game, well, I never finished it but I had it won. This GOTM is only the second game I have ever finished. I hate playing when the outcome is not in doubt.

It is nice to make 90 million happy cows though. Tip of the hat to Moonsinger.

And Sir Pleb rocks.

(lumbers back to the drawing board to see how the heck to shave four centuries off the launch time)

ltcoljt

 

[Moonsinger]

ltcoljt,

From what I read so far on this thread, I think you have an exellent shot for the cow award this time. Other than me, I don't think anyone else was planning for the 2050AD victory. Since I abandoned that goal and ended my game around 1240 AD, no happy cows for me. I'm sorry for letting my herds down.

 

[mad-bax]

Well, I finished

My war with the Sipahi was really slow. I didn't handle the culture flips at all well. I took Spain then India, then Egypt fairly easily, but by the end my Sipahi were facing infantry and were past their sell by date.

I gave up on a military win and changed to diplo. I started a war with the Romans to generate a leader for the U.N. This I did, but made the mistake of weakening them to the point that I faced Mao in the election instead of Caesar. The vote was inconclusive. I was in no danger of losing it as Mao and Caesar hated each other with a passion.

So, having given up on military and diplo, and with my culture value at around 50K I was left with nothing other than the soft option of a Space win. Science had been kept slow to maximise the time I had with the UU, so it was never going to be an early finish. I made a typical newbie mistake and timed a palace pre-build wrong. A big gpt deal ended and I had to turn down the slider a peg, forgot about the palace and jumped the palace somewhere stupid.

Still, I won which is the main thing, and it's my first attempt at completing an Emperor game.

Deity next. Oh joy

 

[Pal {UI}]

When typing up the report of your GOTM, type it as a text file and then copy and paste into the reply section of the site and post immediately.

This way you do not spend ages typing up loads of info to get a message saying "The server is busy, please try again later."

Aaaaaaaarrrrgggggghhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[ltcoljt]

Yeah, and you can run a spell check on it too, Pal. I am sure Aaaaaaaarrrrrgggggghhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! is spelled with 5 "r"s.

 

[Pal {UI}]

Nah - that's the american spelling.

 

[denyd]

All done, with a domination victory in 1345AD and a score of 6298 (how do you figure the Jason score?).

In general, the rest of the game is build Siphai and take cities. Egypt was first, followed by Spain and China. I was in the middle of taking India when the game ended. I kept giving gold, tech, cities, etc to Rome to keep them as an ally in all of the wars. They were just to powerful to have as a enemy. I usually play a small military game (1 defender per city + 20-30 attacking troops). so I always got the "We are weak compared to Rome" message from the military advisor.

I'm quite happy about being able to win without having to go to battle with Rome. As soon as I finished removing an AI, I rushed libraries in their old cities to expand my territory to the max.

Below is the time line for the end of the game:

1010 AD Siphai take Memphis (Bach) & Asyut – Trade Silks to Spain for 4gpt
1020 AD Take Pi-Ramses (Great Wall & Shakespeare) & Abdyos – Cleo has left the game
1030 AD Trade Silks & Incense to Spain for 9gpt
1050 AD Join Alliance with Rome against Spain – Siphai take Seville (Lighthouse) & Valencia – During taking of Seville first Great Leader (Orhan) appears
1060 AD Siphai take Salmanca from Spain
1070 AD Take Madrid (Oracle & Sistine Chapel)
1080 AD Take Barcelona
1090 AD Leptis Minor flips back to Carthage! – Take Santiago & Toledo and Spain is gone - Trade wine to Rome for 18gpt
1100 AD Trade Steam Power to India for WM, 64gpt + 80g – Trade coal to Rome for 12gpt - Orhan completes Forbidden Palace in Hippo
1110 AD Trade Incense to India for 13gpt – Golden Age Ends – Trade Gems to Rome for 19gpt – Trade Democracy to Carthage for WM & 17g – Trade Wines to China for 9gpt
1140 AD Trade Coal to China for 9gpt
1150 AD Trade Saltpeter to Rome for 26gpt
1170 AD Join Alliance with India vs Carthage – Take Leptis Minor
1210 AD SciAd – Electricity – research Medicine - Take Cirta and Carthage is gone – Trade Electricity to Rome for Ivory, Industrialization, 23gpt & 90g
1220 AD Gift Cirta to Rome – Join Indian Alliance against China – Take Nanking and Shanghai with the mighty Siphai
1230 AD Siphai take Beiing – Alliance with Rome against China for WM + 320g
1240 AD Siphai take Chengdu & Tsingtao (Leo’s Workshop) - Trade furs to Rome for 5gpt
1250 AD Siphai take Canton
1255 AD Siphai take Tantung
1265 AD Canton Culture flips back to China – SciAd – Medicine – research Scientific Method - Siphai take Anyang and retake Canton
1275 AD Take Hangchow and China is gone – trade Medicine to India for 41gpt & 160g – Trade dyes to China for 7gpt – Trade Wines to Rome for 18gpt
1280 AD Trade Dyes to Rome for 18gpt – trade Incense to India for 13gpt – India declares war – takes Xinjan – Alliance with Rome vs India for WM + 270g
1285 AD India takes Tantung – Siphai retake Xinjan and take Macao – Trade coal to Rome for 21gpt
1290 AD Trade Gems to Rome to 18gpt
1300 AD Trade Saltpeter to Rome to 26gpt
1310 AD SciAd – Scientific Method – research to 0 (Awaiting TOE) - Siphai take Tantung & Chittagong from India
1330 AD Take Karachi, Bergal & Madras from India with the mighty Siphai
1335 AD Trade Scientific Method to Rome for Ivory, Communism, WM, 190G, 16gpt
1345 AD Game ends with Domination Victory – 6298 points

By the way using a spell checker is quite ugly with all the city names.

Note to Pal, if you get that message, use the back button, you'll be able to see the message before you hit submit. Then use copy and paste to save the typing to a text file.

 

[Pal {UI}]

Unfortunately I don't think that works if the server is busy - the back button just brings up another "server busy" message.

Anyway.....

I pretty much messed this GOTM up, although at least I didn't lose.

The lowlights are:

Didn't get a leader against the celts so I built my FP next to my capital, pending a leader to move my capital south later on (have not worked out palace jumping yet). I ended up owning my island without getting a leader at all, which meant the cities in the south were not very productive.

I decided to go for diplo victory but messed it up. Only 4 Civs left by the time I built the UN (about 1500 AD) and held the vote without doing the usual rounds of bribing - result Rome abstained and Spain voted for me = no win.

Just before the next round of votes I started buttering up Rome and Spain, but Rome declared war just before the vote and their MPP with Spain meant the UN was looking less and less likely.

So I go for the spaceship, except India and Rome were ahead on culture so I had to stop a culture win. So I invaded Rome. They had a MPP with Spain again, so I set India against them while my Sipahi killed off Rome. It was during this war I got my first leader and moved my palace to Rome. At this point India had Spain down to 4 cities, and the leaders started coming thick and fast while I finished off Rome, so I claimed all the late wonders along with a few prebuilds.

Had another crack at diplo but couldn't persuade Spain to vote for me even though they were polite - they alway abstained.

Started working towards spaceship but the research rate was far too slow. The cities around Rome (my capital) were too underdeveloped to be of much use. I was relying on India's GPT to keep my research up at a reasonable rate so their research was shot as well. My old core was almost fully developed, so I just started pumping out tanks (its about 1650 AD at this point).

Finally got bored and decided to wipe out India before they won on culture. I wasn't going to win by diplo anyway, so carried out a ROP rape. Cut off all India's resources and proceeded to arty and tank through his cities, starting at his core and moving out, and using airports to fly in new tanks from my original core cities. I decided to raze most of his cities to avoid being slowed down by flips and to stop a domination win (I had vague thoughts about having a go at milking at this point). I was getting near the domination win limit when India was down to 2 cities and Spain still had 4 cities, however I got bored and gave up any thoughts of milking, mainly because I was pretty ashamed of this game and my milk score would have been very embarrassing.

I was at peace with Spain so I signed a ROP with them. I then traded peace for one of India's cities, invaded their capital on the same turn, then ROP raped Spain to take all their cities on the same, final turn of the game. With the last two civs gone my domestic adviser was telling me to make more friends for the first time in almost 6000 years.

I then spent the rest of the turn increasing my happiness, creating specialists, adding all my workers and slaves to my cities all in a desperate attempt to increase my pitiful score.

I could have won this game (domination) about 10-15 turns earlier by creating settlers and filling in the gaps where India's cities had been, but I couldn't be bothered to transport them over (shame you can't airlift). I was also two techs and two pieces away from the spaceship.

The end result was a conquest victory, 1846 AD , score 4724, 52hrs 21mins 55 seconds.

The most disappointing thing is that I was confident of winning from about 500 AD onwards, it was the implementation that was the problem. I managed to mess up just about everything so this game took far too long. It does however highlight the importance of an early leader to build the FP, and having a specific strategy and going for it right from the start. The game would have been very different if the south of my Island had been more productive, and I should have planned each of my possible wins much better.

If anyone has read this far (well done!)...

Does anyone have a link to the Jason score calculator? I found it last month but can't find a link this time round.

Roll on GOTM20, which I promise to play much better. Deity, yay!

 

[Aeson]

The calculators:

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/games/calculator.shtml
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/games/calculator.php (if the first one doesn't work for you)

 

[ltcoljt]

Why can't the calculators be put up on the main GOTM web page?

As far as that goes, it seems that there is a lot of stuff that should be linked in. Everytime I want something I have to look and look and look. Painful.

 

[MadScot]

Originally posted by Pal {UI}
Finally got bored and decided to wipe out India before they won on culture. I wasn't going to win by diplo anyway, so carried out a ROP rape. Cut off all India's resources and proceeded to arty and tank through his cities, starting at his core and moving out, and using airports to fly in new tanks from my original core cities.
<snip>
I was at peace with Spain so I signed a ROP with them. I then traded peace for one of India's cities, invaded their capital on the same turn, then ROP raped Spain to take all their cities on the same, final turn of the game. With the last two civs gone my domestic adviser was telling me to make more friends for the first time in almost 6000 years.

You know, this is the first time I realised that that was allowed; it's on the list of allowed exploits, for some reason I thought it was one of the banned ones. I know better now.

 

[Oddible]

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

I finished my game, WON!! Space Race. Was waiting to submit until I had gathered all my screenshots and was ready to post too.

THEN MY LAPTOP CRASHED!

I had to send it back to Sony - no doubt I won't receive it until the submission deadline has passed.

Boo hoooooo.

I had soo much fun with this game. My recent schooling the the multiplayer ladder has taught me plenty on how to get a good early start.

Oh well, I've installed to my desktop and am ready for Spain.

 

[Gnat]

First GOTM - First emperor level.

Lasted quite well, only losing in a space race in 1928 (nearly managed to lose at the right time for the actual expiration of the Ottoman empire).

Main lessons learned are the importance of the first few turns, and making sure you don't screw up (lost a warrior and worker early on, due to silly mistakes). Also I must learn how to press advantage of a weaker opponent (Celts) going to war with me. I really failed to get any benefit.

Will probably attempt to do QSC next time as well, to concentrate my mind. Given my PC and free time, that may be all I do.

 

[Pal {UI}]

Originally posted by MadScot


You know, this is the first time I realised that that was allowed; it's on the list of allowed exploits, for some reason I thought it was one of the banned ones. I know better now.

I had to double check the rules again before I went ahead. Given how many times the AI had broken ROP's against me I had no moral qualms!

Jason score 5249 which I believe is a bit pants, isn't it?

Thanks for the link Aeson. Any chance of putting the calculator on the GOTM submittion page?

I'm off to try a deity OCC with the Spanish! Should all be over in 20 mins or so!

 

[Aeson]

There should now be a link to the calculators on the left menu of (almost) all GOTM pages. Updating the web pages sometimes gets lost among all the other things we are working on.

 

[Qitai]

Not a webpage expert. But why not use frames on the left menu (with zero thickness border) so that the left menu is standardised? Copying the left menu onto every single page allows leaks usually.