*Spoiler3* Gotm22-Vikings - End Game Submitted

[Plunderer]

1.21f Open

After aquiring a huge lead during the middle age, there wasn't much to do in the industrial times. Bergen was already producing 100+ culture and it looked like it would accumulate 20k before i would be able to enter the modern times even if i took over some ai towns and rushed libraries, so after rushing the universal suffrage and acquiring another leader for the hoover dam i signed peace with everyone in order to speed up the game. bergen prebuilt a palaced and finished darwin the turn after scientific method was discovered.
here are the dates:
1240 military academy
1260 universal suffrage (leader)
1320 wall street
1370 darwin
1375 hoover dam (leader)
1485 pentagon
(the 2 points from battlefield medicine and the intelligence agency wouldn't have made much of a difference so i didn't bother, but did build the pentagon as i had never before constructed it)

1615 20k achieved

leaders: after the middle age i had a terrible luck with leaders, not only not getting any but losing my elite cavalry to weak units like spearmen and medieval infantry and having only very few veterans promoted - even though my neighbors kept sending more and more units (up to 18 delivered with caravels in the same turn)

City Location:
(how can you attach pictures? )
my city was placed NW NW from the grassland cow. i explained the reasons in the first spoiler but will restate them here:
since leaders would not be avaiable early but abundant if farmed for after the ancient age, i wanted terrain which would be easy to develop and have potential for high despotic/size 12 production. this location suited me perfectly as plains are fast to irrigate and the fur and the lamb were equivalent to bonus grasslands. in addition there were 3 forests (already mined plains) and even though only 2 could be used at a time, the third was good for balancing - when there would be a few extra shields a worker would go to the fish or to the grassland, while if the city would be a few shields short of finishing a project workers could temporarily work the third forest and a mined plain while eating the saved food.
The cow was not to be used until nidaros was done with producing setllers/workers, but then it would be an extra bonus.

Alternative city locations:
the only other option i considered seriously was SirPleb's location but turned it down as:
The only way in which it would be better than the plains location was the wool on the hill. a nice bonus definitely but it would give only 2 more shields than a plains square and imo this did not compensate the disadvantages which were:
5% extra corruption - this would be one of the shields
it was 3 tiles away from the capital and there was a river in the way, which meant that after the in-between tiles were prepared (and these were mostly forests...) many worker turns would be lost travelling
50% more time to develop 5 of the tiles. given that i wanted the colosus and perhaps a temple before it meant that these few turns plus the lost worker turns could lose the race.

Other comments
the extremely slow tech pace slowed down the production of culture improvements.wonders. although i coordinated leaders and town production to instantly (or close to) build these as they became avaiable, the bottleneck factor was science, even though throughout the middle ages i was discovering a new tech every 4 turns. If peace was signed russia, england and france would have researched much faster and speeding things up for me as well. this case would have require a significantly different way to play however, as the more leaders necessary would mean that i would have needed to go offensive and not worry about libraries and universities.

also, since i had the lighthouse no other civilizations could make a contact and i wasn't too eager to introduce them either. had anyone else built it the tech pace would have been a lot faster.

general:
this game was a lot of fun, especially due to the location of the other civilizations and the continent shapes. i did expect to see the russians around and possibly the french at a greater distance unless there would be a bridge between sweeden and denmark. also when i saw the fog over the see it "smelled" like england on the bad guessing side i expected to have the chinese together with the russians, but perhaps that would have been too much also the vikings should have had a LOT of oil - at least 3-4 resources; it was cool that there was no coal as norwegians do not use much rail transportation as far as i know and there even is no railway north from trondheim, or somewhere there.

 

[Dianthus]

1.21 (Euro) Open

Spoiler 1 : Ancient Times (4000BC to 110BC)
Spoiler 2 : Middle Ages (110BC to 1395AD)
Spoiler 3a : Industrial Ages (1395AD to 1874AD)
Spoiler 3b : Modern Times (1874AD to 1928AD)

At the end of Spoiler 3a my minimap looked like this :

Continuing war with China (1874AD to 1894AD)
The war with China proceeded briskly. With no source of rubber they couldn't add to their meagre stock of Infantry, and my tanks went through them like a hot knife through butter. During this period (1880AD) the American's dared to order one of my China bound Transports out of their waters. I let them off this time, but I'll remember!. I calculated that I could take the South and South-East islands from the Chinese (leaving them only the Northern island) and be just within the domination limit. My calculations turned out to be wrong, but I had been watching mapstat every turn just to make sure (I've never reached the domination limit, ever, even in non-GOTM games, so was aware of my inexperience and was extra-careful). I just needed to avoid building any culture in 2 or 3 of the cities I gained from China. From this point on I stayed at a fairly safe 9 tiles from the domination limit. I made peace with China in 1894AD, they gave me all of their gold (172g) and an Alliance against the Americans.

The following is my minimap in 1896AD :

Final war with America (1890AD to 1912AD)
I declared war on the Americans in 1890AD just prior to making peace with China. I razed every city I took, and tried to fish for leaders. I gained one leader in 1906AD that I used to rush the Manhattan Project. A couple of times I landed 8 tanks next to an American city only to have the Americans reduce them all to 2 or so hps, but that only reduced the American defensive force and my large complement of tanks (100+ at this point) easily swept through the American continent. In 1902AD China and America signed a peace treaty and China declared war on me, but China weren't really in a position to threaten me. I completed the annihilation of America in 1912 AD, resulting in the following minimap :

Final war with China (1912AD to 1928AD)
I had been at war with China for a while since they formed an alliance with America, and now finally "made sure" and started an attack on their remaining cities. In 1920AD I whipped them to within an inch of their life (just the one city), then proceeded to reduce that inch to a couple of millimetres . In 1928AD the Chinese empire looked like this :

The Cultural Completion
In 1928AD Bjoergvin reached the 20K point having built the following:

Conclusion
My score increased progessively throughout the game. This was the 1st time I have reached the domination limit, but could do with reaching it a little earlier in the future. My final Fireaxis score was 5184 (Jason 4427), with the score graph at 1928AD as follows :

I was fairly happy with the positioning of Bjoergvin, but this Sir Pleb reject position definitely hindered my initial expansion (only 4 cities at 1000BC!) as I refused to share the Cows/Sheep with any other cities. I think the main reasons for my (relatively) slow victory were my lack of leaders (just 4, and 1 of these right near the end), and my over-successful slowing of the tech-rate (I aimed to slow the tech-rate from the start to ensure I wouldn't lose by Space-Race).

I was pretty confident in this game from just after the QSC period (after expanding on my meagre 4 cities!), and was soon in complete control of it, far more so than last months lower difficulty game even. I've gained a lot of experience with fighting wars this month, though there is still a lot of room for improvement. This game was the earliest I've ever gone to war. Previously I haven't gone on the offensive until Cavalry, or only reacted to other Civs attacking me. This game I started on Greece with Berserkers, and was at war pretty much constantly from then on, remaining in Monarchy to avoid war weariness.

Another 1st for me is my complete lack of scruples when dealing with the AI during this game. I was certain I didn't want to go for the UN, or even keep it as a fall back option, so rather than keeping everyone happy I did the complete opposite and went out of my way to infuriate the AIs. This included breaking lots of deals (my favourite was trading Economics+177gpt to China for Democracy+Astronomy, then trading Democracy to the Americans/English for Navigation+Chemistry+Alliance vs Chinese+gpt) and making peace/starting war on the same turn. Luckily the AIs won't remember this treachery in the next game!

The only downside this month was that it took me 60+ hours again (I was down to 45 last month), but they were an entertaining and fun-packed 60+ hours, so I'm not complaining really .

 

[SirPleb]

Plunderer, well done! A very impressive 20K date from a nicely played game!

 

[SirPleb]

Originally posted by Plunderer
how can you attach pictures?

You can use the "Upload File" link on the menu at the bottom of this page to upload pictures to the CFC server. The upload process will show you the http://... address of the picture once it has been uploaded.

Then in your message you can insert a string like this:
{IMG}http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/yourfilename.jpg{/IMG}
to display the image at any point in the message. Replace the curly brackets in the code I've shown above with square brackets - I used curlies to avoid having the text above treated as an image in this note.

 

[Ghostwind]

1.29

Toward the end of my game I had to take out both the English and American capital's to keep them from winning the space race.

I managed to take out the English one, but the American's got off their space ship 1 turn before I was going to pulverize Washington.

I had sabotaged production there to keep their last component from being built, but somehow they built it in one turn anyhow, when it should have taken 2. I had an ICBM being built that turn and a ship off the coast ready to land. I thought I might have to sabotage production again the next turn before I could occupy the city, but to my shock they won the game. Maybe they used a leader? I'm not sure.

So I lost via Space Race in 1968. I'm not sure I could have won a 20k cultural by 2050 anyhow. It would have been close.

I played a pretty mediocre game with a lot of bad bad luck with numbers. I only produced 2 leaders out of many many many many many chances. The fact that America took the whole other side of the map made me change my tactics and warmonger when I didn't want to. I also had a lot of losses I didn't think I should have.

This is my first GOTM loss in three chances. Oh well...can't win 'em all.

Ghostwind

 

[Naboo]

To the Stars part IIIb - Success!

open class, v1.29b(Mac)

Industrial Age
The Dawn of Time (pregame)
Ancient History
Middle Ages
Industrial Age

Scribe stands uneasily in the Oblong Office: "Good Morning, Mr.President".

"Ah, good morning to you, Scribe. Let me get to the point. I think you need to take a lesson from THOReau's contemplations at Woden's Pond. You've read this"?

"Yes, sir. But I don't understand the referen.."

"SIMPLIFY!"

"Simplify! Simplify!"

"…… um, that seems unnecessarily repetiti…"

"Don't be insolent, young man! Listen, we appreciate your efforts but you need to cut down on the wordiness. You have great news to report and your readers want to get to the meat of it. And, there isn't much time. Now go and do us proud."

"Yes, sir" (begins to walk out)

"Pertinent details only, please!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Smaller pictures"!

"sheesh"

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

The Modern Age

Thanks to our astute Trade Advisor, the Greek War was greatly aided by capture of their only source of oil.

In the east, America finally ended up at war with Aztecs, and decimated them quite rapidly. It was clear that Vikings and America would be vying to win the Space Race. The UN was not built by Vikings but with all of the wars, there was no point to an election.

After some good progress against Greece, our people became very war-weary (yes, war-weary Vikings)! In order to preserve our Democracy, Einar negotiated an end to the war. Alexander had had the starch taken out of him and wouldn't be a problem anymore. The cities of Sunlight and Mårs, which had perenially flipped to Greece, were rebuilt from scratch as New Sunlight and New Mårs.

It must have now dawned on Abe that it was coming down to a space-race and America declares war against Vikings in 1720. The war was of little consequence and America never sent a credible threat to our shores. Our small but effective fleet of battleships took out the larger force of annoying ironclads. American warships would arrive but did little more than nuisance bombing.

Einar sued for peace as soon as reasonably possible so that Vikings could concentrate on our space program. Abe was clearly fatigued.

Hubba, the Great Leader from the Greek War, personally oversaw the completion of the Vikings' first home-grown Great Wonder. This would help close the technology gap with the Americans, whom we still trailed.

Vikings had their work cut out - America jumped out to a commanding lead, building 4 components of their starship. Vikings push hard, and make a couple of, um, "covert acquisitions" - one from Greece,and then from America. And now there was a chance. Our large productive cities were poised. And then finally a glorious day dawned. The completion of our Moon Program was to at long last send a Viking to another world. Tears came to Einar as he stood watching the immense rocket, proudly emblazoned with the emblem of the V.S.A.

Our expertise in rockets was also employed militarily. With a heavy heart, Einar approved the construction of several ICBMs. Hopefully only to ever serve as a deterrent. Apparently this worked -- America did not even bother building them.

Vikings were at long last fulfilling their destiny. The millenia of scientific infrastructure-building paid off and we took the technological lead for good. America was stuck building their 6th component as we raced ahead. With our productive capacity and tech lead, the once absurd goal of colonizing space was at hand. America would finally complete SS Engine in 1816, but it was too late.

Abe, clearly getting desperate, tries this classic maneuver

When that doesn't work, he declares War once again. Einar sends an envoy with this message: "Dear Abraham, we regretfully wish to inform you that we must refuse your offer of War at this time. You are cordially invited to the launch of the VSA starship 4 turns hence. Respectfully - Einar Ragnarson"

Our Domestic Advisor was getting rather forgetful lately. Einar didn't have the heart to ask her to retire. She'd given lots of good advice over the years. On this day, Einar smiled kindly. "Oh well, my dear. Humor an old man and let it be so".

And so it was that the Vikings won the Space Race in 1850, A.D.

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

Game notes -

My game had the following weaknesses

- falling behind in tech. Have to check diplo screen more often to catch those fleeting deal opportunities. This is my perennial bad habit. I'm trying to get better. Really.

- Ridiculous placement of FP in Oslo, precluded any movement of the palace later on. At the time it was "just build it anywhere". BAD BAD BAD. I could have gotten a lot more productivity out of Russian/French territory with a better placement. Fortunately, Oslo being on the west coast of the start location actually did boost productivity in the east coastal area of the Russian/French territory a bit, so I lucked out somewhat.

- Um, what's a Wonder? Zippo until Seti. Gotta work on that. Capturing Smith's did help tremendously.

- Taking 3 turns to settle 1st city! - Actually that was more for fun and to get away from formula-style play.

Other notes

Could probably have been more aggressive. I tended to back off of wars after moderate gains, to resume infrastructure. Might have been better to go after Russia first, even though they were larger.

I guess everyone was tired of space-race after gotm21. I wasn't able to finish that one, so this game satisfied my Space jones. It was very satisfying because I rarely pick a predetermined victory path unless it is by turning off the other possibilities when setting up a game. So this was a bit of a healthy stretch.

Notes on the Map - this map offered tremendous aid to the human player. With the exception of the easily-defended land bridge, it was an island in terms of being able to settle it unhindered by competition from the AIs. On the other hand, it still offered the advantage of still allowing land exploration and contact with a reasonable number of Civs before mapmaking. The starting area was large enough for a strong core and enabled even mediocre players such as myself to get a strong start. Even though the game was rated as emperor+, the geological advantage of the starting location could make up for the primary danger for human players on higher levels - a successful land grab without the risk of very early war.

 

[Karasu]

I wanted to call it a "race", but poor Ragnar ended up launching his SSS (tm) eons later than the GOTM standards...

This was in part his fault, for not expanding enough and especially not trading very aggressively in the early game, when all is decided.

But look at the stupid AI. They could help by researching a little bit. Instead, no, they kept on fighting and fighting and fighting with one another like spoiled brats!

Anyway, I got (will you believe it?) my first ever Space Race victory with Civ3
And, along with it, my "fastest submission date" (tm), the 27th... scary...

 

[Dianthus]

Originally posted by Karasu
But look at the stupid AI. They could help by researching a little bit. Instead, no, they kept on fighting and fighting and fighting with one another like spoiled brats!

Karasu, why are there so many AI's still alive? That looks like the sort of game I normally play (it was a little different this month )

 

[Karasu]

France had only one city in the other continent.

I chose not to invade the other continent or the English-Celtic island beacuse I was trying to let them grow and research: I was even selling them techs at outrageously low prices, or even gifting them -not to mention gifting luxuries- in order to enhance their research capability.

But they spent a lot of time fighting, and even when they were not, it looked like their research was really slow. Can't understand why...
I know I've got a long, long way to go (tm)

 

[Tarkeel]

PTW 1.21 Conquest

After a rather peacefull game, the Industrial age begun with the invasion of the greeks, to make room for my very late FP core. The Russians helped taking a few cities. By this time, the English were banished to 3 small cities and were going nowhere fast. China was the world leader, having most of the northern part of that continent. The Aztecs were large, but backwards, with the tiny Americans squeezed in the middle. The Celts declared a surprise war and took my brittish holdings, and I couldn't be bothered to retake them.

I was rather lucky with the coal, it appeared in the radius of one the cities I had taken from the greeks. China was still ahead in techs, but after getting Infantry and Espionage, and finding out the Chinese lacked rubber, it was time to slow the tech pace in 11570 AD. I was lucky, and stole about 2-3 industrial techs before declaring war, the last one being communism which I sold around for MA vs China. After this, the Chinese only researched one more tech, Sanitation, which was promptly stolen. After the Chinese, the Russian was next to go in 1812. I was intending to let the rest go in peace, but then the pesky Aztecs sneak attacked my infantry with cavalry, burning the city! They had to pay, so I wiped them of the map.

In the end, I got a dual domination and 20K win in 18. Very satisified with this game, since it is both my first completed GOTM and first 20K (I think, atleast on above warlord). I have a few things to improve on though:
1) Keep better notes
2) Build forbidden palace in core, and rush palace in other part
3) Worker pumping is your friend
4) Use a leader on army. I saved them for rushing wonders, but might have been better off culturally with HE.

After the ancient ages, I only lost out on a few wonders:
Sun Tzu: I didn't even bother trying for this, part of the reason was it would trigger my GA earlier then I wanted.
Newton's University: Unsure how this slipped, I thought it was under control as it was built in a shield low Celtic city, and I had a good headstart on it.
Universal Suffrage: Probably leader rushed by the chinese. The city that was building it was very low on production, and I had a slight head start. The replay shows the Chinese getting a leader a few turns earlier, so leader rush is likely.

 

[ltccone]

As the MAs came to an end my Berserks had still not fought a single battle. I tried to attack the Celts with them, but the English wiped them out first. So I sailed back down to attack the Greeks, who were reduced to a single city west of the landbridge.

On the way there they signed a MPP with China. I was ticked. I had to sit in my boats and wait for the MPP to expire. When I finally got to attack my Berserks made short work of the Greeks and my GA started.

I next tried to figure out how I was going to try to win. After looking over the situation I decided on a diplo win. To win that way I need to "clear the board" a little. For some reason the Aztecs didn't like me, and they only had three cities left on the southern island. I loaded up my boats with Berserks, sailed west, and took them out. I now had a base of operations in the "eastern" hemisphere.

It was a good thing I did because the Americans had a solid lead as the #2 civ (after England). I knew the English were untouchable so I had to go after the Americans. They recently had swept the Chinese (what happened with their Riders?) form their mutual continent. The Chinese now held the islands to the north and east of the American held continent.

I had an existing MPP with Russia and I signed one with China and the English, both who had no love for the Americans. I decided to land on the SE tip of the American continent. They had no rubber, so no infantry. I attacked a small city with Berserks (it was amazing they were still useful in the late industrial age) and captured it. I landed boatloads of infantry and artillery on my beachhead. I rushed built city walls, civil defence, and an airport to airlift in more troops. The city was also on a hill. The Americans attacked me with swarms of cavalry. I'm guessing over 50 of them died in futile attacks that killed none of my units.

I started to fight out of my beachhead. The addition of tanks really helped. My allies didn't do much, but I didn't expect them too. In a relentless drive city after city fell. My allies started to take cities in the northern part of the continent. The Vikings became the #2 civ. I built the UN when the Americans were reduced to a few cities in the north of their continent. The Americans were still at war with everybody. The Amercians abstained, the English voted for themselves, and the Chinese and Russians voted for the Vikings. A diplo win!

 

[OneFastWarrior]

well, ugh, I was letting america get too big and voila I lost a cultuaral to the americans.... woops. I did score 3190 in a loss. but I shoulda been more aggresive

 

[Wanderer]

Hard Luck , OneFast .. yours is almost the only game I can recall hearing the american's were anything but whipping dogs. I would have guessed that england would be the culture kings ... wonder what went so different in your game ...

 

[OneFastWarrior]

WEll, England America and China and Myself were the biggest civs. I had signed MP with America and blocked some waterways. England got all pissy and declared war on me. This made America go to war with them and they had mp's with China, and TheCelts. So, We all ended up wiping England from the map. I failed to wipe Greece out earlier and when they declared on me I got too involved in building a war machine and fell horribly behind the Americans, while they were wiping out China with the Celts help. so I'm sure they were building more culture while I was just focusing on Greece and well...

How many people lose culturally? I don't recall seeing that many. how embarrissing...

 

[Naboo]

Originally posted by Wanderer
Hard Luck , OneFast .. yours is almost the only game I can recall hearing the american's were anything but whipping dogs....

In my game, they ended up controlling the eastern hemisphere, and then they got Hoover Dam (oops!). combine that with their Industrial trait and you've got a juggernaut.

 

[Wanderer]

I guess thats one of the cool things about Civ. Given exactly the same scenario, things do not work out exactly the same - you always have to customize and cater to whats happening.

@OneFast ... Were you going for a cultural 20K ? Thats is one of the down sides - you have to play long (unless you're Sir-Peb, Moonsinger et al.), which opens you up to these things.

 

[smackster]

America was stunted in mine, I think because in watching the replay I saw a very early city razed by the Aztecs. When I met them both a few thousand years later they were both very weak. Aztec just didn't grow and I suspect Cracker had a little to do with that, America probably because of the early wars.

Didn't make much difference when the Vikings arrived with Tanks many years later.

 

[Wanderer]

@smackster ... mine followed very much the same route. Aztecs initally seem to have pounded america, but hit the brakes big time. China all but owned the far continent at the end ... only to be awed by my wonderous city!

 

[smackster]

I must post a minimap from when I first got contact with the other Continent as its bizarre how stunted their growth was.
My culture was just ok so we used the Modern Armor method of cultural assimmilation on the Chinese.

An unrelated general question on the start is that I checked the dip screen every turn for every civ from the start but was unable to buy any workers until 490BC from France. Did others have more luck.

 

[denyd]

Highlights / Lowlights of final spoiler:

The result was a 20K Culture victory in 1898 AD, score of 5560 with a Jason score of 4941 in 36 hours 37 minutes.

I probably could have been a little better except for a Forbidden Palace built when I missed the Sistine Chapel by 4 turns. I did learn the rush building culture improvements lesson, which helped make the pre-1900 win possible. I also could have been more aggressive militarily, but I was hoping to land a couple of additional great leaders.

Only 2 Great Leaders (Einar & Joe Kapp) in this period and 5 for the game, despite being at war most of the time from 1340 AD to the end. Einar builds Military Academy and Joe Kapp builds Internet.

The Aztec war lasts from 1340 to 1405, with the Vikings taking all Aztec cities. A settle on a cruise keeps them alive until 1760 when they follow Russia & France’s folly by declaring war on England with only a single city Civ!!

Using the TOE slingshot we take the tech lead from England in 1530 and never look back. For some reason England became so preoccupied with buying luxuries and saltpeter from me, she goes from being ahead by Nationalism in 1300 to getting Electronics from me in 1802 (I’ve gone from TOG to Computers in the same period).

China was the original power in the East, but wars with England & a lack of resources led to Mao’s exit in 1796.

I pretty much spent the last 100 years of the game GL farming, with little success. I gifted a couple of cities to America, intent on taking them back with elite tanks, but they were never garrisoned.

Just food for thought for everyone else out there, but didn’t you find it a little odd that the Vikings were assigned a culture victory, while Babylon (in tournament 5-4) got a conquest assignment.