*Spoiler1* Gotm18-Celts - Full World Map

[Yndy]

I played this game with the intention of a Space Ship Victory with the target year 1250AD. I tried another new thing by building the Pyramids by hand in Entremont before 1000BC.

You can see my expansion path below and although I tried to encourage tech research all I could do is Medieval Age by 290BC. Not really much to report now and I warn you that I won’t have much to report in the next spoiler(s) either.

One thing to notice: I had two settlers from the huts and you can see them circled from the pictures. The first was pretty good but the second was almost useless, so late and so far of my core cities.

Seeing all your progress I am now thinking where would I be if I also used the early warmongering path.

 

[mad-bax]

Moonsinger: Thankyou for your kind words

I think I've been reading too many of your posts. I too have around 75 workers, but 35 of them are slaves and they are lazy.

Paris is lovely at this time of year. I'd recommend it.

I have had no culture flips either (PTW). I think it can be turned off as an option.......

At the point this spoiler ends I had only two great leaders which I used for the Forbidden Palace (Rome) and Tsung TZus. Training the troops on the Barb penninsula would have been a good idea.
I really wanted another one for the Sistine Chapel because I am trying for a cultural win. Great leaders are just like our buses in Britain, When you want one they're nowhere to be seen, when you don't two come along at once.

Yndy: The Chinese had 11 cities at 1000BC in your game. Wow!

Wounded Knight: I think the difference between Monarchy and Republic in this game is very small. Because the average commerce per tile in this game is so low, and because you get a shed load of units for free in Monarchy the difference in monetary terms is minimal (at this stage of the game). You might benefit from republic in a peaceful building game with a weak military but otherwise.....

 

[LeSphinx]

I'm in 460 AD.
Here is the map of the world in 460AD:












I've conquered Rome and a big part of Iroquois.
I have right now only 14 Gallic Swordman and starting to buit Knights for futures war against Greece or Carthage.

I've only had 1 great leader I used in order to buit the Forbiden Palace in Veii.

I planning :
- to built more Workers (I have in 460 AD 17 workers) in order to improve correctly all the field around my cities.
- Became a good Republic with lot of improvement in big cities and starting on big wonders.
- Building a rapid army of knight in order to make war to destroy the iroquois cities remaining and a new target.

Which target do you think will be best for me? Greece or Carthage.


LeSphinx

 

[ControlFreak]

@Singularity thanks for pointing out that I uploaded and linked the wrong image. (I had resized it but uploaded the wrong one.)

I have had no culture flips either way. That might be good since I've put some risky cities down just to keep increasing my allowed units in monarchy.

I just thought of another difference between this game and the last two interms of gold. Carthage and Rome were both commercial civs. That has some big advantages. I love playing commercial civs.

 

[col]

Wow - this game may be labelled Monarch but it feels like Emperor. I've never had such difficulty researching stuff. After the usual rapid expansion phase, I'd got 9 cities by 1000bc - not expecting too much from my qsc submission since I hardly built anything but settlers, workers and warriors.

A casual conversation with Phil lead to the usual testosterone fuelled challenge between the honourable (?) representative of the old country (me) and the uppity ex convict from down under (him). We are going for fastest 100k culture win in this game - and that doesnt look easy. Loser pays for the drinks ...

Next phase of the game therefore was a blend of ICS and temple building - religious civ helps a lot here.

I was dropping further and further behind in tech (on Monarchy !!!) when the Iros built the GLib. Nice break. All research promptly stopped and I squeezed cities all the way to Salamanca. Flipped a couple of Roman cities along the way but lost a couple flipping to the Greeks.

The plan was to delay taking GLib as long as possible to try and gain as many post education techs as possible. As long as you get education from the Glib, you just keep getting techs that turn. Its a careful balance though. Take it too early and you dont get the techs. Take it too late and its too well defended.

To cut a long story short. I took it with my knights and got 12 techs out of it - 5 past education - sadly not including demo.

Egypt was shooting ahead in tech and Carthage was looking menacingly east. A couple of bribes embroiled the world in war, slowed down the pace of research (essential in a culture win) and France promptly wiped the Carhtaginians. I vultured my cities into the gaps when the borders contracted and flipped a couple of French cities

Its 1000ad now. Building cathedrals and unis everywhere. This is probably a very different game to most.

I doubt if I can reach 100k before Egypt and Japan reach 50k so I guess there will have to be a spell of modern warmongering.

Next question - how to get ToE before the Ai but thats for the next episode....

 

[LKendter]

I post more tonight, but I am sorry I didn't go space race. I have wanted to keep the tech pace slow, but my pace is way beyond the pace of many games. When I post in the next thread, you will see when I entered the industrial age. I made almost ZERO effort on tech research. I did nothing but 40 turn minimum science runs until the industrial age. I pulled off many successful 40-turn runs for tech. A couple of times the AI beat me by one or turn to techs like currency. However, I had cash galore to buy at 7th Civ or cheaper price. I even bought techs like Republic that are usually outside the human range to purchase.

I wonder how much building the Colossus on the cow along the ocean with the rare river helped. This was my most aggressive game for purchasing workers early one. I even brought several civs up to date in the ancient age when I could acquire a worker to a tech. This solved much of my problems with food poor start.

I expect a very bad QSC score as I had two granaries for worker factories I/P at 1000BC, but the workers didn't appear in time for the QSC.

I wonder how much I influence the tech pace with the entire worker for techs in the ancient age.

As for the tech pace in itself, which is beyond monarchy, this answer is simple.

This map is very contrived to give the AI tons of luxuries
That is the overwhelming factor why every AI Civ is strong in my game as of the end of this thread. Of course, in the next thread...

 

[ControlFreak]

Hmm...it seems my initial response to THE missing factor for commerce may have been a little rushed and not insightful. While the map is lacking rivers, there are actually many things that make earning money harder in this map that in the last two.

1. No Rivers.
2. No Coastal Cities. Building toward the coast would be building away from the AI, not usually advisable early in a panagea game.
3. No gold and only 1 luxury in our area.
4. Not a commercial civ.
5. No food bonuses so harder to make workers and thus longer to road worked tiles. Also we're not industrial as we were in GOTM17.
6. AI extra/monopoly luxuries. They have more income so they research faster, we pay them for tech, they research faster, we pay them again for tech. Vicious cycle thats tough to get out of, eh HotRod? And thats if we're not buying luxuries from them either.

Ways to combat this?

1. Conquer, aiming for luxuries first, then good riverful lands
2. Prioritize the food bonuses allowing more workers and settlers for the coastline
3. Minimum science, research things the AI doesn't to maximize trade ability for least gold input.

What did I miss?

 

[hotrod0823]

AI extra/monopoly luxuries. They have more income so they research faster, we pay them for tech, they research faster, we pay them again for tech. Vicious cycle thats tough to get out of, eh HotRod? And thats if we're not buying luxuries from them either.

Tell me about it ... I have been building universities waiting for all my gpt deals to run out so I can finally turn on my research. Let just say it is way into spoiler 3 before my universities pay off. I wonder how much gold I am wasting in upkeep . Who knows with all these domination and conquest games my space win (I hope) may be a loner .

Hotrod

 

[el_kalkylus]

I have just forced myself to learn photoshop. Here are some pictures about my game. Now that I have finished it, I can put up some pictures.

Controlfreak, I think you are right. Those points are a big reason to why people were having slow research. They may seem trivial, but it's not really something you think about when you play the game. Definately worth remembering.

 

[cracker]

Originally posted by LKendter
This map is very contrived to give the AI tons of luxuries

Lest we have too much distortion of perspective here, you should remember that large sections of these maps are randomly generated by the Internal Civ3 engine. On this map, luxury placement was controlled by the Civ3 map generator with the exception of one terrain type and the exact proximity to the human start position. This was not done to "torture" you but was part of the big picture game sequence if you look at where we have been in the past three months and then look forward to where we will be going in the next three months.

You don't want all the games to be the same do you? or maybe you do?

 

[ControlFreak]

Originally posted by cracker

Lest we have too much distortion of perspective here, you should remember that large sections of these maps are randomly generated by the Internal Civ3 engine. On this map, luxuray placement was controlled by the Civ3 map generator with the exception of one terrain type and the exact proximity to the human start position. This was not done to "torture" you but was part of the big picture game sequence if you look at where we have been in the past three months and then look forward to where we will be going in the next three months.

You don't want all the games to be the same do you? or maybe you do?

So I'm guessing the terrain type that was omitted from our area was the river? I guess desert and jungle tiles are also omitted from our area but I don't think that's what Cracker was talking about.

"Torture" - ow, do it again, it hurts so good.

No I don't want them to all be the same because it shows me that my play is bad on whatever kind of map is generated. (Lots of room for improvement)

I would only want them the same so I could hope to get a little better at one of them.

As to where we're going, here's a link to the games list (GOTM webpages can be kind of hard to find with so many links waiting on the new server.) I can't figure out what cracker means by "where we've come from and where we're going". Could it be that we were in continents-by-the-sea and we're headed to middle-of-europe panageas? Someone help me

 

[scubagtr]

Thanks for that link. I always wondered how people knew we would be the Celts this go around. Now I will need to start playing as the Ottomans, once I finish this GOTM, hopefully with me as the victor this time, but we'll see.

 

[Darkness]

Well, I founded Entremont on the starting position and started expanding and scouting, so in 1000BC I knew all the AI civs (I traded around the contacts, so with minimal research effort I had at least tech parity) and had 11 cities... After that I went at my expansion a bit more agressive... I build 20 veteran warriors and as soon as I had hooked up the northern iron, I upgraded them and went to war wioth Rome (allied with Greece), thus getting a GA. Rome is now reduced to one little city on the south coast, and after that I went to war with the Iroquois, who now have 4 cities left.... Twenty turns after the start of the war with Rome, I gave Ceasar peace for all he had, which included monotheism, so that ends what I can tell in this spoiler. That was in 280 AD, BTW.

My map in 280 AD:

 

[SheepStriker]

Originally posted by Greg Loader


I have not had, nor seen any culture flips, which really surprises me! My culture is more than twice anyone else's. I have surrounded some neighbors' cities completely with culture, and they're closer to my capital than their own. No Flips.

Cracker, is CF turned off in this game? (PTW, first upgrade)

No, as i posted earlier, I had a Greek and a Roman city flip to me...

I depends on what the AI builds in the city. The Greek city was in the mountains growing extremly slow, I was at war with the Romans, gassing them, when their smallest city that was near me flipped.

I have another Greek city almost surrounded but it doesn't flip (yet ).

EDIT: Oops, this comp has a cookie for SheepStriker, while I am known as A Space Oddity. That's what u get when there is more than one civfanatic in a household. (U guessed it: SheepStriker is related, calls me mam.)

 

[Greg Loader]

Col, Txurce, and Space Oddity(Sheep Striker),

Which Version of CivIII are you playing?

Greg

 

[a space oddity]

@Greg: I'm playing with civIII (v1.29). Are you using PTW? Do you think it matters? Did they change the culture-flipping rules?

 

[Moonsinger]

No, I don't think Cracker changed the culture flip rule. The reason it didn't flip because the AIs are in love with our religious civ and probably because we have very high culture comparing to them.

PS: I'm playing V1.29f

 

[hotrod0823]

All the more reason to get some cities to flip to you Moonsinger.

 

[civjunkie4ever]

This was my first GOTM on Civfanatics and I feel I didn't play it very well. Celts are my favorite civ and I am a dyed in the wool warmonger, so a pangea map is mother's milk.

I won with a domination victory after the date this thread allows me to talk about. I usually leave domination off as I prefer conquest, but it amounts to the same thing.

I say I played it poorly because I did a terrible job with early city placement and micromanagement.

It was just my good luck that I ran into the Romans before they had squat and was able to kill them with a warrior rush before they even built their 3rd city. So I built generally to the SE. I went north as far as the mountain iron, but avoided fighting carthage or greece. They both have such nasty early defensive units that I thought it would bog me down and attrit too much of my forces. Instead I continued south, taking out the american indians, and then grabbing all the english cities on the mainland. I even took a few chinese cities before I touched greece or carthage.

Finally after my front line was impossibly far from my capital, I took on the greeks with an alliance with carthage and france. Then carthage with France's help. and so on.

Since I never built a boat -- I never bothered with the English.
I also never bothered with the barbarian madness to the north -- it was still there when the game ended.

Unlike so many other plyrs, I only built three lines of units: warriors to celtic swordsman, spearman to rifleman, and horseman to cavalry. Units beyond rifleman never appeared in the game.

I basically only built four buildings too: barracks, temples, aquaducts and cathedrals. I built maybe 6 marketplaces and a couple of banks with the thought that i might want the extra 5% GP/turn small wonder -- but I abandoned the effort when I saw how close I was coming to winning by domination.

I never studied a science (cept 1) -- which is why progress was so slow along the tree. I never built a wonder, although I got 4 with leaders) and built only 3 small wonders. I left it 100% on money until starvation started to become an issue after 3000 or so years of constant war and I had to jack happiness up to press for 70% population.

This GOTM really lends itself to a warmongering, continuous warfare approach. I never consolidated cities I captured, preferring to roll fowards and constantly support the front with cavalry as they were built. In the end no city had more than 1 defender and about 25% were undefended.

After so much fighting I ended up with about 10 leaders, half went to rushing wonders and the FP and half became armies.

If I'd really optimized for a warmonger game I think I could have shaved 200-300 years off my final end date. I built too spread out early on, I didn't rush my FP early enough (or build it myself and then rush the palace later) and I never hit the Mobilization panic button, even after I had nearly every city building units.

I also never really gained or exploited a unit superiority advantage. I was the 1st to get cavalry because I pushed science to 100% and lost some artillary and barracks for 5 turns until it was mine. Then back to 100% money and rapid upgrades. That let me crush the aztecs in only 3-4 turns as they had no real defense for cavalry. I never tried to deny resources and I only did one ROP betrayal at the very end when I needed a few quick victories to reach 70%.

So despite the bad start, and modest micromanagement I did okay. I submitted the game already.

 

[Greg Loader]

Originally posted by a space oddity
@Greg: I'm playing with civIII (v1.29). Are you using PTW? Do you think it matters? Did they change the culture-flipping rules?

PTW, first patch. I think it matters. As I said, I've had numerous cities 'surrounded' by my culture, closer to my capital, and no flips. Seems very strange to me.

All players so far reporting flips have been playing CivIII it seems.

Anybody playing PTW have a culture flip?

Greg