*Spoiler1* Gotm18-Celts - Full World Map

[Bamspeedy]

I didn't go to quickly wipe out other civs 'too' early. With the dry start, I felt I needed to concentrate more on expanding instead of setting some cities to solely build military to fish for a leader.

I settled on the starting location. Had 14 cities by 1000 B.C.

Got lucky with contacts. Like I stated earlier, I had 3 slaves by 3100 B.C., which I got from trading techs. I had sent 3 warriors out early. It doesn't matter if they are veteran or not, you want to get contacts as early as possible, before the AI trade techs with each other. I ended up acquiring 6 more slaves before 2000 B.C. I was able to start on Polytheism at 3300 B.C. I got polytheism (40 turns) and monarchy (14 turns left at the end of QSC), by going with 10-20% science.

I do think culture flipping was turned off in this game. Iroquois got a settler from a hut at 3650 B.C. and it was just outside Athens (2 tiles in between city centers), but the city never flipped.
I contacted Iroquois in 3300 B.C. and they already had a free city and Mysticism!

Didn't get any leaders during the QSC period, but got a leader (pyramids), around 950 B.C., another around 775 B.C. (Great Library). I got Monotheism at 530 B.C. from Greece. I got 3 more leaders by 150 A.D. (two in one turn!).

I must have popped about 10 huts, but I got mostly barbarians (no techs, or settlers).

At 1225 B.C. my military consisted of only 2 horsemen, 6 warriors (4 of them exploring too far away to do anything to help the war), and I declare war on Carthage! I wasn't worried, as my cities were set up to be spitting out more horseman in the next few turns and Carthage was busy building a wonder. Then I also declared war on Rome at 1000 B.C. I held off both of them pretty easily using terrain to my advantage (I was fishing for leaders). I did have to pop-rush a spearman or two for emergency purposes because the RNG didn't co-operate with me. AI archers/warriors serve just as good for 'training' as barbarians do. I usually would make peace once they had something to offer (like a worker at least), or if my attacks were failing and my cities would be in danger.

I had also declared war on the Aztecs (to break a deal), but they were too far away to do anything. I thought I was caught up with the Aztecs in tech, but then suddenly they were the only one with Horseback riding AND philosophy. I bought philosophy for a gpt deal, broke the deal by declaring war, then sold philosophy to other civs for an alliance against them . They survived, but I'm sure they are much more crippled than they would have been. I did get an Aztec city in peace negotiations.

The barbarians/volcano to the north was never a problem. The 2 defense of the volcano provided a brick wall for the AI to continually throw their warriors/archers against, commiting mass-suicide. The AI can't handle the harder barbarians.

 

[Ribannah]

Bamspeedy,

I am amazed at the speed the AI researches in your game. In my game they are so slow .... of course, that is fine with me, the longer my Gallic Swordsmen are the best units around, the better.

Now a Great Leader to build the Pyramids, that's a huge leap forward compared to doing it by hand. Too bad you didn't get it within the QSC period! If there is someone out there who attacked early AND got a Great Leader from it, we're all dead meat for this month's competition.

By the way, what are you going to spend all that money on?

 

[Bamspeedy]

Someone did get a leader and rushed the pyramids at around 1900 B.C., if I remember correctly, but I don't know how well his performance was by 1000 B.C. (he sure got a great start, though).

I spent all my money pretty early. I established embassies in all 10 civs (that was probably 500+ gold, right there). I also paid cash for a worker or two (they cost over 100 gold now). I also bought some techs at 3rd civ prices. I could have saved money by waiting until everyone already had the tech, or wait until I got polytheism/monarchy done and traded for them, but the tech pace was speeded up if I bought the tech and sold it to the other civs (recovering some of my investment).

The tech pace really slowed down in the middle ages, though. I think the AI was getting techs from huts in the ancient era. And since I kept everyone caught up in tech, every hut introduced a new tech to the world (instead of 2-3 civs all getting the same tech, for example).

At the end of the QSC, I only lacked Construction, Currency, code of laws, Republic, Monarchy. I had to re-negotiate peace with Egypt at 1000 B.C. to get Literature from her, so she would reduce what she charges me, because she would only accept a lump-sum payment (due to my broken treaty with Aztecs). She had a monopoly on Literature, but I got it from her for ROP, WM, contact with Carthage, 158 gold.

 

[Ribannah]

Originally posted by WoundedKnight
1910 BC -- Capture Carthage, produce a great leader Vercingetorix

1700 BC- Vercingetorix used to rush pyramids in capital city, producing more rapid growth in all cities throughout the game and allowing rapid expansion

1600 BC - Capture roman city of Antium

1200 BC -- 2nd Great leader produced in battle with Romans. This great leader was sent to the southwest where the forbidden palace was rushed (near the dyes on the river by mountains, next to Greece and China).

Ah, yes ..... not just the early leader to rush The Pyramids, but another one for the Forbidden Palace, too!

 

[Singularity]

Bam, I'm very curiious to what your citycount was at 1000bc. I can't wait until the QSC score is presented next month

I also struck gold on contacts, and persistent checking of foreign advisor gave me 5 slaves total from the french and the cartaghians for techs. Buying them was out of the question though... It seems like I missed math and poly, otherwise we where par on techs as well.

That archer of yours was truly blessed Ribannah, also a great opening that I don't think many can beat.

I'll refrain from commenting on WoundedKnights opening play out of sheer jealousy....

 

[WoundedKnight]

>I'll refrain from commenting on WoundedKnights opening play >out of sheer jealousy....

Yeah, I guess I was fortunate. I don't usually play militaristic civs (I like Industrious + scientific, usually Persian or Ottoman), and militaristic had big benefits in this game so I wanted to take advantage of them. I went for an early dark age attack as the Carthaginian UU is scary, 2.3.1 -- I knew that if they were able to build this, I would not be able to gain an attack advantage over them until the late middle ages. Same for the Romans with their legionaire. Unfortunately after dispatching the Carthaginians & most of Rome, I was too late by the time I got around to the Greeks, who already had hoplites running around. So I had to put off my ambitions for a Greek war until significantly later in the game.

One thing I think I should have done in retrospect is move my palace to a more productive spot later in the game. It wasn't on a river and had limited trade. A little later in the game, the capital (Entremont) fell to about the tenth most productive spot among all my cities -- in spite of the fact that it had no production. I didn't think about this at the time, but if I'd been a little smarter, I would have used one of my later GLs to rush a palace in a more productive spot instead of just building extra armies.

BTW, I had briefly contemplated using the 2nd leader to rush Sun Tzu's instead of the FP. The FP turned out to be the right choice for me since I took a break in my warmongering during the middle ages, and the FP really helped my civ's productivity further down the road while Sun Tzu's would have had almost no impact at this time.

WoundedKnight

 

[Bamspeedy]

Originally posted by Singularity
Bam, I'm very curiious to what your citycount was at 1000bc. I can't wait until the QSC score is presented next month

City count, or tile/city ratio? I posted my city count earlier (you probably missed it), of 14 cities. Tiles/city was 7.79 tiles/city.
I didn't build quite as dense as I did last month, plus the aztec city I got from the peace treaty boosted up the average a little.

 

[Karasu]

Last month, I thought I was playing in a hurry... Well, I didn't know what would happen this month!!!

In fact, I began by making careful plans and taking notes etc... Then I was overwhelmed by the events and now I am really rushing a few turns late at night, half-sleeping and (of course) without any energy to write down things or take screenshots. Still, it's a very interesting game -my first pangea map- and I am enjoying it as usual with the GOTM...

My idea was to go for a culture victory, something I am not too good with.
Being the game a Pangea with many civs, I thought I would start quite aggressively to secure room for future expansion.
I captured two Carthaginian workers as soon as I met them: the ensuing war really slowed them in the early stage, and they never recovered.

I did the same with Rome, Greece and Iroquois, with similar results. But this may have been a little too much, as no one of these early wars was conclusive enough to allow me to wipe any of the opponents.

As soon as I had a clear picture of my surroundings, I went for Rome and Iroquois, trying to keep them clear of Horses and Iron.
I more or less succeeded, as Rome is now only waiting to be eliminated and the Iroquois would easily fall next.

I have kept Carthage as a bumper between me and France. Greece may come later.

I was very lucky in getting two early Leaders, which became Pyramids and Great Library. This allows me to go with zero science and building Temples everywhere.

There are two things that shocked me as I browsed this thread:

- The astonishing speed of some of you in early conquest. How did you do that? I never ventured as far as France but for exploration, and I thought I had a good aggressive start. I will have to seriously reassess my standards...

- In going for culture, there must be a balance between early expansion and building of cultural improvements. I tried to play my game with this objective in mind, but I can't really say where the optimum is.
And after seeing the amazing performance of many of you, I am starting to believe that an extremely aggressive approach was the best in this game, regardless of the ultimate goal.

 

[mad-bax]

Originally posted by Karasu

- In going for culture, there must be a balance between early expansion and building of cultural improvements. I tried to play my game with this objective in mind, but I can't really say where the optimum is.

Same here. Due to early wars I was way behind in culture when I stopped expanding in 700AD. Cheap temples and Cathedrals means that the more cities you have the cheaper it is to build culture. On the other hand expansion takes time and the new cities are hopelessly corrupt. What I did was to build more cities close to the capital and FP city (Veii) so I could build culture in these new cities and buy culture in the corrupt ones. But I really am not sure whether I expanded too much or too little. My guess is that I should have stopped expanding 20 turns earlier. At that time I had 100 cities which would have had temple and cathedral 20 turns earlier. I was still buying unis in the corrupt cities when the game ended by which time I was still only producing 1300 culture points per turn. So I guess I might have finished 15 turns or so earlier.

It's a difficult call and I would invite comment.

I personally was forced into early warmongering as I had no lux (except gems) and no horses. Because the UU can't upgrade I just kept going with them until they were all used up. I was astonished at how easily the AI fell over. So expansion was trivial right up to the point the Carthagians researched Gunpowder. Then expansion went from trivial to impossible (for me) in one turn.

 

[Darkness]

Originally posted by Singularity
I'll refrain from commenting on WoundedKnights opening play out of sheer jealousy....

I think I'll join you in expressing that sentiment! Surely this game has to be the winner in the QSC (if he's submitted his game...)

 

[ButSam]

I just restarted the GOTM (I had problems w/ my old one when I converted to PTW), and noticed that either one of two things is true:

1) This GOTM is HIGHLY dependent on which lucky direction you choose as your initial direction to explore.

2) PTW has done some serious AI modifications to the beginning of the game (v1.21f).

In my first game (original Civ3, v1.29f), I was SO far behind in techs, met the Iriquois (via a warrior travelling near Rome) right away and they had 2 more techs than me, and Rome had nothing (and wouldn't trade anyway), and there were no civs to the north of us...the end run is all the other civs knew each other long before I knew them...the only civs I met were unnatural technology gods or doing terribly.

In this replay (PTW v1.21f), I decided to explore west first, and met the Carthinagins, Chinese, and Greeks all before the Romans. This allowed me to trade extensively and become the LEADER in the tech race, as opposed to horribly behind! The AIs didn't know each other, but I had a good outlook! Upon going down to discover the Romans, I found they were behind me by 4 techs! All of this before researching my first tech (which I chose as Mysticism this time, and later traded for IW with the Greeks, along with about 50 gold and 1 gpt). Anyway, bottom line is by 1500 BC, I have researched 1 tech myself (Mysticism), starting on Math, and have all of the first-level techs along with IW...and ALL because of the direction I chose to explore...I couldn't trade techs at all in the first game 'cuz the Iriqouis got some mystic huge bonus, and the Romans suck!

Of course, this GOTM will NOT be a submission for me, as I am replaying, and that gives an unfair advantage to me, but I just thought it was very interesting to note.

Sam

 

[Karasu]

Originally posted by mad-bax
I personally was forced into early warmongering as I had no lux (except gems) and no horses. Because the UU can't upgrade I just kept going with them until they were all used up. I was astonished at how easily the AI fell over. So expansion was trivial right up to the point the Carthagians researched Gunpowder. Then expansion went from trivial to impossible (for me) in one turn.

I wanted to wait until at least the beginning of Middle Ages before I used the SuperSwordsmen, to avoid too early a GA.

Moreover, I didn't want to wait too long, so I used Archers. When I got to using those SuperSwordsmen, I started thinking that they are a bit too expensive for my liking -but that may also be due to the typical roman spearman whose real defence value is five-hundred...

-------------------------

Back to our "cultural victory" problem, do you know of any strategy thread on the subject? (I am just too lazy to look for it )

If you look at the last game resutls, Ribannah's and Moonsinger's game really stick out. They are fantastic cultural victories achieved with a (at least to me) perfect understanding of where they wanted to be in that balance I was talking about: they achieved the fastest victory and the best expansion -which was then turned into an "easy" cultural win...

I definitely need more practice in this area -I also need to get back to work as I've got a proposal to write before tomorrow...

 

[mad-bax]

Originally posted by Karasu



If you look at the last game resutls, Ribannah's and Moonsinger's game really stick out. They are fantastic cultural victories achieved with a (at least to me) perfect understanding of where they wanted to be in that balance I was talking about: they achieved the fastest victory and the best expansion -which was then turned into an "easy" cultural win...

But don't you think that this is because a domination/milking strategy involves capturing as many cities as quickly as you can and then rushing temples in them? I imagine that preventing a cultural victory in a milked game would be a major consideration.
If you then rush a cheap Cathedral aswell and you have in excess of 200 cities, cultural victory is assured. All your core cities will have all the cultural improvements already, so they can just crank units. I really don't think Ribbannah or Moonsinger had to consciously make a decision in this respect. They probably just "allowed" a cultural victory to happen rather than take measures to stop it. They may also have decided to allow a cultural victory as it has the latest target date in the new scoring system, so it gives them more turns to milk the game. (Please correct me if I'm wrong).

(I also know that Moonsinger got the internet via a leader quite early. This would be almost a cultural exploit on a pangea map but wasn't available in my game due to the slow research rate).

There is an article in the war academy about culture rushing. But it's old and it won't teach someone of your calibre anything. Though it was probably ground breaking at the time (he adds hurriedly).

 

[Singularity]

Originally posted by ButSam


1) This GOTM is HIGHLY dependent on which lucky direction you choose as your initial direction to explore.
.
.
.
In this replay (PTW v1.21f), I decided to explore west first, and met the Carthinagins, Chinese, and Greeks all before the Romans.
.
Of course, this GOTM will NOT be a submission for me, as I am replaying, and that gives an unfair advantage to me, but I just thought it was very interesting to note.

Sam

ButSam, I have to disagree a bit here. When you start a game on a Pangea map, and your city is in the northeast corner of the minimap you have two very simple choices to do with the first warriors: First go west as there should be most terrain to uncover in that direction, second should for the same reason go south. North and east are both poor candidates since you will soon run into the northern borders or the ocean in the east. I actually sent my second warrior east though since I was very curious to my distance to the coastline.

 

[tao]

Originally posted by ButSam
1) This GOTM is HIGHLY dependent on which lucky direction you choose as your initial direction to explore.

O.K. What do we learn from this? Send more than one warrior.
My first 3 warriors explored "deap" northwest, southwest, and south resulting in contacting all civs rather soon.

 

[Capt Buttkick]

@ ButSam:
I sent my first warrior S and the second E and still managed to keep tech parity. But that may be due to me getting lucky in making contact with the English over the strait to their island.

 

[tao]

Originally posted by Bamspeedy I do think culture flipping was turned off in this game. Iroquois got a settler from a hut at 3650 B.C. and it was just outside Athens (2 tiles in between city centers), but the city never flipped.

Defintely not so. I squeezed in an early temple and thus had about 3 times the culture of the other civs. By 400 AD, each a Greek and neoC city joined us.

 

[Moonsinger]

Karasu,

I'm using a modified version of Sir Pleb 's strategy from GOTM17 for this one. I have been focusing culture development on just 1 city to ensure the 20K cultural win and spend the rest of my resources on conquest. I delay/stop the war everytime I get a great leader (because it usually take him about 4-5 turns to travel to my culture city). After I use the leader on rushing Wonder, I attack again to fish for another great leader. So far, I got at least a dozen leaders.

Of all the Great Wonder that I have built so far, most of them were built by great leader (with the exception the Pyramid and 3 other Small Wonders).

PS: Leader fishing is really fun and easy when the defenders are fallen a tech tree behide. Plus, there are also a lot of barb training camps not too far from our core cities and our civ is militarilistic; therefore, elite units are also very easy to come by.

 

[Ribannah]

Originally posted by mad-bax
I really don't think Ribbannah or Moonsinger had to consciously make a decision in this respect. They probably just "allowed" a cultural victory to happen rather than take measures to stop it. They may also have decided to allow a cultural victory as it has the latest target date in the new scoring system, so it gives them more turns to milk the game. (Please correct me if I'm wrong).

Let's correct you here, then (although this is not the right thread to discuss the old GOTM.)

First, the 100K target date is still much earlier than the 20K target date. But it is irrelevant. If the target dates (and a few other parameters of the scoring formula) are correct, it's just as hard to make the late date for one victory type as to make the early date for another, and you don't get more points.

Second, I didn't go to war at all in my GOTM#17 game. Nor did I 'milk'. I went for the fastest date, remember?

Third, I set out to achieve a fast (& peaceful) 100K victory when I started in 4000 BC, because I liked the challenge and it was something new to try for me.

I do not think you can get a comparable result if you just fool around and then choose your victory condition late in the game.

Research, building order, urban planning, diplomacy and many other factors need to match the chosen victory type from the beginning. This goes for any victory type, and they're all different.

 

[Karasu]

Originally posted by Ribannah
I do not think you can get a comparable result if you just fool around and then choose your victory condition late in the game.

This is exactly why your game impressed me so much -as well as Moonsinger's, of course
You had the same objective, and you reached it (with a very similar score) following two different paths.

What I am trying to understand in this game is the criterion by which I can decide, more or less a priori, how to phase the various factors you mention; in particular, when to stop aggressive expansion and start peaceful building.

Time (and Jason) will tell us...