*Spoiler4* Gotm17-Carthage - End Game Submitted

[drewshark]

Obviously, it is easier to see with hindsight that suicide galleys may not have been the best idea, especially the longer you waited. However, as zagnut commented, it was impossible to conceive that we would be relatively even with the other civs and that there wasn't say, several civs in contact with each other elsewhere. I have always taken the approach to, "roll back the blackness" as soon as possible because then you can assess your options with other civs and unclaimed land. While SirPleb's analysis is very interesting in retrospect, it is made with the knowledge of what was to follow. The more I think about it, suicide galleys were a good chance to take if you did it early enough and had the production capabilities given that 90% of the world was unknown and Navigation was probably 8-10 techs away at least by the time many have contacted either Greece or America.

 

[z0dd]

My plan was to keep peace throughout the game, not attack (if possible), and aim for a space race.

Overall, it went well. I did lose 3-4 galleys that were ALL within 1 square of safety (different locations).

Each of my cities had nearly every improvement, with tech and production taking priority. For unknown reasons, somewhere in the mid-game everyone decided to go to war with me. I only had to beat back 1-2 Civs, as the others couldn't reach me by the time we agreed on peace.

The only Civ I didn't accept peace from were the Germans, who owned that small coal island to the middle-right of the map. Needing coal, I waited until I took over that isle before going to peace with the Germans.

The only other military campaign I had was to take the small uranium isle in the lower right corner. After this, I beelined for a space race. I was able to build most of the parts in a couple turns each, and easily won a space victory in 1840ad, with a score of 1887.

Pics:

http://users.adelphia.net/~z0dd/gotm/Histograph_score-1887_year-1840.JPG

http://users.adelphia.net/~z0dd/gotm/SpaceRaceWin.JPG

 

[Ronald]

As promised in my first report, no more wars in this game. So the map looks almost the same as it was in 1100 AD:

Originally posted by da_greatest
Here is my city in 1902 when I got the 20k culture victory. It was producing 92 culture per turn at the end.

I finished in 1900 and my city looks pretty similar to yours:

Finished with only 2257 points since I did not increase my territory. I just wanted to see how quickly I can get to 20k.

I had lots of system crashes during the game:
The first came when I was trying to add one of the barabarian workers to one of my cities.
The second came when I tried to make peace and trade goods in the same turn (took me a number of reloads to figure that one out)
The third came, whenever I tried to trade luxury from Persia (I still don't know why, I just stopped to trade this luxury)
The fourth crash came, when I try to increase the luxury slider.

Anybody else with similar problems? (I played PTW 1.14f)

Ronald

 

[Greg Loader]

Spaceship in 1852 with 2400 pts.

2 Great Leaders

Best stratagy was choosing the American/Russian/German continent for my FP. I chose it for it's symmetry and size. Having Iron Works in Boston was a bonus. Thanks Cracker.


Worst stratagy was not trading techs for techs. I was researching much faster than the AI, and always ahead, but others who finished faster probably did so by trading techs.

Second worse stratagy was loosing my one Army on it's first battle. No Heroic Epic. No War Academy. No more Armies.

Third worse stratagy was not securing more luxuries. I ended controlling 7, but had to trade most of the game to get 5 or 6.

Suicide Galleys worked well for me. By 900ad, I knew about everybody, but kept them secret from each other.

Saw only a couple of squid, and outran them.

Got only 2 Great Leaders. An Army and a Forbidden Palace.

I did not mind the lag time so much. I assume it was due to all the 'fog gallies' and 13 Civs. I use a 1.7Ghz, 256Mb.

Thanks again Cracker.

 

[alamo]

Originally posted by RufRydyr
@space victory losses: If you have spies in all the civs and the wonder initiation popup checked you'll be notified when spaceship components are built. If you're concerned that someone is going to build the spaceship destroy it by:
1. Signing ROP with that civ.
2. Place a bunch of troops beside their capital.
3. Nuke their capital if possible. If you don't have nukes, just destroy it with all your units there. When you capture the capital it destroys their spaceship.
4. Abandon that city. It usually is a good city and it'll probably culture flip back anyway.
5. Fortify all the units that you have left in that spot on a mountain and watch the AUI commit suicide on them
6. Laugh, laugh, laugh

Yep, that might have saved my bacon. Does the AI really let you move a SOD next to the capital, or will it ever attack? It is smart enough to garrison the capital? Your troops need to be 2 squares away when you nuke, right?

One thing about culture flips - there seems to be a tipping point where the chance goes from small to huge. Too bad there is not some indication of flip danger.

 

[randomguy123]

Hi everyone!

This was the first GOTM I completed by deadline and I really enjoyed it! I launched the spaceship in 1796...not bad, but not as early as I wanted. The archipelago map presented many new challenges and opportunities, some of which I will list here:

1) It is much more difficult to found a high-productivity city. Coasts and sea don't produce shields (until offshore platforms...) so getting enough production to build units, improvements, and wonders can be a challenge. I founded Carthage on the coast one square east of the starting position, but in hindsight should have moved it south one square instead.

2) Commerce has the potential to be extremely high with coasts producing 3 gold under republic/democracy, as compared to 2 gold for most non-river land squares. Founding a bunch of cities on the coast gives you the potential for a ridiculously massive economy. In this game, add the fact that the Carthaginians are commercial AND the possibility of both stock exchanges and commercial docks and you have some insane options to boost revenue. It seems this type of game suits itself well to rushing financial improvements as much as possible (each of which will increase income, making it easier to rush future improvments). By the end of the game I was researching at 80-90% to get techs in 4 turns and still making over 1000 gold per turn in the treasury (maybe half of this was from other civs).

3) Exploration and discovery of other civs can be difficult. Many players seem to have chosen the suicide galley method...in hindsight I probably should have done the same, it took me until almost 1000ad to meet everyone. I have a feeling that this map had civs more spread out than a computer generated map might.

4) Great Lighthouse and Magellans are key (no-brainer really). Obviously on a map that is mostly water an extra square of movement will be advantageous, allowing you to explore faster, settle faster, and move troops faster.

All in all a well designed game. I ended up controlling only the starting archipelago (including all of Egypt's former lands) and about a third of the America/Germany/Russia island which I invaded to secure coal.

I am impressed with those players who have discovered the trick of keeping the AI even tech-wise with them, and splitting the research...I need to learn to do this if I'm going to launch sooner!

Lastly, a couple of questions from a newcomer to the forums:

-how do you take and post screenshots?

-I noticed that my game didnt post on the hall of fame in my copy of PTW (v 1.14). I'm not talking about the HoF here on CFC, it's the one that comes with the game. Anyone else have this issue or know why it happened?

 

[Singularity]

Originally posted by randomguy123


4) Great Lighthouse and Magellans are key (no-brainer really). Obviously on a map that is mostly water an extra square of movement will be advantageous, allowing you to explore faster, settle faster, and move troops faster.

I am impressed with those players who have discovered the trick of keeping the AI even tech-wise with them, and splitting the research...I need to learn to do this if I'm going to launch sooner!

Lastly, a couple of questions from a newcomer to the forums:

-how do you take and post screenshots?

-I noticed that my game didnt post on the hall of fame in my copy of PTW (v 1.14). I'm not talking about the HoF here on CFC, it's the one that comes with the game. Anyone else have this issue or know why it happened?

First of all, congrats on a nice win! The launch date is not bad at all considering the other finish dates - I launched mine in 1878 earning a score of 3288 points.

- TGL is a must have in any map where you aim for tech/map trade before any other civs. Magellans was built as soon as possible to ease my peonmoving/save a turn or two on invasions. This map was a perfect example of when to build this mostly useless wonder. I saved alot of turns moving my railworkers from island to island with an extra movement.

- I have never tried the scientific nurturing of selected AIs to gain a few turns on my own research rate - I see that going for space race or diplomatic victory allmost dictates that you do this in games up to emperor lvl. Just look at last two GOTMs and DaveMcW and Ribannahs launchdates. . Personally I have more than enough to follow AI on tech at top two diff levels.

- Civ3 don't autostore screens in a folder like many other games. You need to his the print screen key and use the edit menu to paste it into an image program - like the default windows Paint program. Then you need to resize it to around 640X480 pixel size. If you compress it to 75% from default size you should be fine. Save it as a JPG file and use the Upload link at the bottom right of any forum page.

- I also have the missing score in HOF in my PTW1.14. Dunno what cause this really...

 

[Vici]

How did others deal with the barbarian island?
I had two galleys with two hoplite and two swords camped offshore for centuries. I has waiting for an opening to appear on a mountain before landing. I also wanted to wait until I had a settler - no point clearing the island just so that someone else could land a settler.
From time to time an opening would appear, but never on a mountain. The first to land on the island was China with a pike and settler. The pike held off a few barb horses before dying. Next was Germany with pike, knight, and settler. Both his units survive (redlined) the first attack. Instead of keeping his units together, he attacks with the knight and survives (still redlined). Another galley of mine now arrives with two infantry. (I have another ship with two more infantry and a settler close behind). I land everything I have on different tiles on the island to limit Germany's options. There are very few barbs left at this stage.
Germany's pike and settler are destroyed in the next attack. The German knigh disappears (presumed disbanded) next. That leaves me with a settler and enough troups to prevent another landing until I get another settler built.
Removing the volcano and releasing Thunderfall, Cracker, and Lefty, and eliminating the last of the barbs was trivial with infantry.

I should probably have brought a settler to the island much sooner. As it was, I was in time, but any later and the the next AI to land would have controlled the island. This wouldn't have been a disaster as I was buying furs, and had my own oil and uranium anyway. At the time, of course, I didn't know what critical resource might be on the island. After having to go to war over coal earlier, I didn't want to repeat that exercise if it could be avoided.

 

[RufRydyr]

Originally posted by alamo


Yep, that might have saved my bacon. Does the AI really let you move a SOD next to the capital, or will it ever attack? It is smart enough to garrison the capital? Your troops need to be 2 squares away when you nuke, right?

One thing about culture flips - there seems to be a tipping point where the chance goes from small to huge. Too bad there is not some indication of flip danger.

If you have a ROP they don't seem to mind a SOD. I put the troops right beside the capital. The trick with nuking is to drop the nuke not on the city but right beside it on the opposite side of your troops. That leaves the roads intact. Use ctrl-G to turn on grid. The nuke kills many units and heavily damages many more for it's entire 9 tile radius. When using a lot of nukes, I try to have some of those 9 tiles as water, because there is less pollution to clean up. See an example at: http://members.cox.net/rufrydyrsciv3games/

There are threads that discuss the details of culture flipping. The formulas rather. But screw up just once and allow your FP to flip and you'll never forget it!

 

[RufRydyr]

Originally posted by Singularity

You need to his the print screen key and use the edit menu to paste it into an image program - like the default windows Paint program. Then you need to resize it to around 640X480 pixel size. If you compress it to 75% from default size you should be fine. Save it as a JPG file and use the Upload link at the bottom right of any forum page.

- I also have the missing score in HOF in my PTW1.14. Dunno what cause this really...

I use Paint Shop Pro. It lets you takes several screenshots at once. Crop and resize the pics. Convert to JPEG and use compression to save bandwith. There's a thread somewhere that discusses this.

I think the HOF score problem may have been fixed in ptw1.21

 

[Vici]

I haven't seen any discussion of easter eggs in this game apart from the volcanos and special workers. I discovered two other specially named units. Are these open for discussion?

 

[Email10]

Well it was a couple of weeks since i finished my first GOTM. I finished with a space launch in 18-something with 2K-something points.

I stayed at home for most parts of this game. Killed off the Egyptian early , used some suicide galleys and made contact with Greece and Rome. The rest I didn't meet until I got navigation. In the midieval period I had a long war against Persia. They launched an attack on my home island but was fought off quickly. I tried to send more and more troops to them but didn't manage to keep any cities. They either flipped or were taken back. I'm not so expereinced with war so after having failed miserably I decided to keep the rest of this round peaceful and focused on building up my home islands.

Some notes of worth:
Coal was never a problem for me. about 10 rounds after I discovered the railroad a coal mine was established on just outside Carthage. Lucky me!

This was the first game ever I managed to get control of corruption. With republic and 30% luxury and peace I got decent production on the former Egyptian islands and I got the FP built quickly, since I didn't get a GL from the wars.

I missed out on several wonders with just a couple of turns. I must learn to plan better.

Things I have learned in this game (from mistakes and from this forum):
Help scientific civs with tech so that you can benefit from them, especially in lower level games.

Use horsemen for attacks and now swordsmen. I've always been fond of the swordsman but the benefits of the fast moving horseman is clear to me now.

Try to get peace as quickly as possible. Don't take the wars personally, not even sneak attacks! Even if you think you haven't gained anything in the war, sue for peace. If you want to fight him more, get your troops in position and launch a new attack, then sue for peace and so on. Maybe you won't get popular with this tactic, but it's definately better than fighting long wars. And you will be popular with your own people at least.

Build as many cities as possible in the beginning. I have been to focused on letting every city has it's own tiles, meaning I only built 5 (!) cities on my home island. These cities was of course good in production, but the strength wasn't shown until late in the game. Impressed by the people who got 15+ cities on the home island.

Nice game cracker :worshp: - looking forward to the next GOTM with the celts. I just acquired PTW! Boring that they are so slow to release it here in Sweden, but now I have it at least!

 

[SirPleb]

Originally posted by Vici
How did others deal with the barbarian island?

I had similar problems waiting for an opening. I diverted four Knights to Mt.Faka during my invasion of America/Germany. They floated around for a few turns waiting for a good opening, then gave up and grabbed an opportunity to land on grasslands. It took a while for the Knights to clean out all the barbarians. One Knight was lost along the way. The other three became elites, finished the job, and then went to join the war on America while a settler landed on the cleansed island.

 

[alexman]

I submitted over the weekend, so here's a quick summary:

We built a 4-turn settler pump in Carthage, which quickly filled the starting islands with cities. The ring of cities around Carthage was also specialized: a worker pump, a galley producer, a veteran warrior producer, the Lighthouse city, the FP city.

After meeting Egypt and exchanging techs, we switched off research hoping to get some more techs from them before eliminating them. They got Construction and we saved enough cash to upgrade several Warriors to Swordsmen. In hindsight, I see that I left research at zero too long, which cost me several turns from the finish date.

The war with Egypt triggered our GA (in Republic) and gave us a leader. The FP was already finished in Plebis Magna, so the Palace relocation to Heliopolis along with the GA started giving us a new technology every 4 turns. This 4-turn pace continued comfortably until the end of the game.

We left Egypt alive for a while, in hope of them doing some research for us, but they didn't. We attempted no suicide galley contacts, but in the Middle ages we beelined for Navigation. After Navigation we went for Banking and then Economics, in hope of meeting some more advanced nations that could teach us Feudalism or Monotheism, but that didn't happen. Optional Economics did allow us to get Smith's very early, but in the end it was probably a waste of another 4 turns from the finish date.

We met all other civilizations, but we didn't try to speed up their research so that they remain backwards and out of contact with each other as long as possible. That way we could 1) roll over their ancient units easily and 2) keep them from learning about the attrocities we were about to perform on other continents. The second point was essential for our continued trade for luxuries and a Diplomatic victory.

Our few barracks cities started producing horsemen, and after getting Leo's Workshop we upgraded 37 of them to Cavalry. America/Germany/Russia was the first target, and the entire continent, which was still in the Ancient Age, fell to our Cavalry charge within a few turns. The next target was Zululand/Babylon (the Iroquois were destroyed by the Zulu), and they were just as easy a target, despite just having discovered Feudalism. Finally, we took out China/Aztecs, who were the least advanced of them all.

Our surviving Cavalry (21 out of the initial 37) were not enough to take out another civ, especially since the remaining 4 civs all had Gunpowder by now, so we decided to bring them home and just milk the score for about 20 turns until the UN was built.

As we were finishing off our conquest of China, the Persians discovered Navigation and showed up in former Egypt with a Caravel. Although most of our lands were undefended, we luckily had two swordsmen on that particular island to fend off the Persian sneak-attack of a single Immortal. We of course dragged England into the war, which distracted Xerxes, and we saw no more Persian units until after they agreed to peace.

When we entered the Modern Times, we gifted all our techs to Greece and Persia, the only remaining scientific civs, in hope of them getting Fission as their bonus tech. It didn't happen, so we had to delay another 4 turns while we researched Fission ourselves. A GL from the previous wars was used to rush the UN, and we won the vote with a 4-1 margin over Caesar.

Since we got Ecology and Rocketry from the two scientific civs, we could have launched just 28 turns after we built the UN, which would have certainly resulted in a higher score. Unfortunately, this wasn't enough motivation to keep me playing a won game for several more hours.

 

[Killer_Klein]

This was my first GOTM and first game at Regent and overall it didn't go that bad.

I have never liked maps with tons of water and so many itty bitty islands. I usally play with 2-3 continents.

I loved the idea of the volcano and the Fog. It was a neat little twist that kept me from building on the southern most island in the starting cluster.

Things I Learned:

I have never thought about suicide galleys before. When I heard everyone talking about it was I shocked. "You can do that?"

The Importance of destroying tile improvements. I always see the AI do it and I always think it's such a waste, but normally I have like 4 or 5 of each resource. But with the resources being somewhat limited I bombarded to remove Persia's access to oil, before I could move in troops.

I won via Diplomancy. Me, Greek and Persia were the three most advance Civs with them being 2-3 techs behind me (until I got ToE) Persia declared war on me and we went at for a while until I took a few cities.

Built the UN and figured that I would be against Persia and that would have been great because at one point it was me, Greece, Babylon, Germany, English and China. With Rome fighting China.

But because of my beatdown it was Alexander I was against and beat him 7-3 and I was surprised because Persia abstained and I had a long extended war with them. And at the time of the vote I was at war with the Zulu and they also abstained.

That's about I guess. Thanks cracker this was great and I am looking forward to playing GOTM18-Celts.

 

[Smirk]

This was my first gotm in quite some time, I recently got reinterested in Civ, last one I played was gotm3 I think. Its great to see this still running and such an interesting scenario created.

Great job guys!


Anyway, I'm not a big fan of island maps, nor defensive oriented civs, (and this one is very defensive, both the hoplite AND the musketeer ). So I decided to do something I've never done: culture victory. And above that, no war mongering at all. My victory will not compete with a few others metioned here, because I was basically learning as I went with this game type, and made a few errors that were very costly. However, I never built an offensive unit until very late in the game (2 tanks and a bomber, which were never used). And I was at peace with all civs the entire game. I'm a reborn pacifist.

My main error which cost me at least 10 turns (my city was producing ~111 culture when I won) was that I forgot that the colleseum gives culture, and 2 points, which would have easily hit the 1000 year bonus since its an ancient age building. So at the minimum I missed ~1000 points. I'll check one of the other games once this is over to see what I missed out on. Also my score wasn't too high since I only had the very limited land around the start, and only got 1 culture flip the entire game. I don't know if this is good or bad, but I expected to get more considering how many flips I've lost in my warmongering past.

Infrastructure was fantastic though, I had no problem keeping a tech lead, and no problem keeping my many large cities happy. About half my score is just from happy citizens. I also had coal spawn beside my capital so I didn't need to trade for it. I did manage to get the two miniture barb islands since I got navigation first, but the one barb island was way too close to Iroquois and they must have lucily reached it since it was settled long before I got there. I'm glad I did get the other barb islands since they were packed with resources, uranium and oil in the same city!


My only dissappointment was that I didn't get to see any squid (other than the info page here). How many were in the map?

 

[lateralis]

I had the opportunity for the diplo win (as I built the UN) but as the UN seems pretty useless these days (ba dum bum ) I went for spaceship instead which I got. I finished a while ago so I don't really remember the details except that I could've gotten the UN win since everyone pretty much loved me.

highlandwarrior - congrats on the first regent win. I know how fulfilling it can be to finnaly crack a new difficulty level. Each time I won on a new difficulty (most recently emperor) it was a great feeling. If you keep plugging away, I'll bet you could crack monarch in less than a month. once you start to get the game concepts in your head, it becomes easier and easier to apply them to more and more dire cicumstances. (ie the AI getting a leg up on you on the higher difficulties)

all in all, I was excited to be able to participate in this GOTM. as a mac user, the mod community has been pretty much a closed book to me . But now that cracker et al have been working to help us come into the fold, I've been really psyched to see what changes to the game can bring by way of new challenges and scenarios.

looking forward to the next one!

lateralis

 

[Bolan Longpants]

I decided to end the game the fastest way possible: through diplomacy. This may sound a bit odd since I wiped 6 civs from the planet but the good thing is the other 'living' AI civs didn't know . I left the AI backward while I was cruising through the industrial age. To show you how backward the AI really is I'll add some screenies. This is my diplomatic screen one turn before I build the UN.

My opponent (I already estimated it would be Hammurabi) only had contacts with the 2 civs on his continent. Now how can he have a vote from some one he hasn't actually met?? I don't even know if it's possible for Babylon to get for example the Persian vote. Anyway, here's the outcome of the UN elections.

This game shows how poorly the AI deals with archipelago maps.

 

[Bolan Longpants]

I just reloaded the save one turn before my UN victory and I declared war on England, Babylon and Persia. England and Persia voted for Babylon despite the fact they didn't even have contact! Here's the outcome:

 

[Zwingli]

Gifting techs to scientific civs to speed up the research rate for an early space race/diplomatic victory is a useful tool which can shave several turns off of the finishing date. However, the tech rate in the early game is by far the most important factor in an early tech victory. The turns to research an ancient age tech like map making can easily vary between 20 and 40 turns which is a difference of about 100 years on a space launch. Therefore, the ancient and early middle ages (ie. the QSC period and shortly after) will determine, for the most part, the date of a space or diplomatic victory.

Fast early research is dependent on fast population growth: getting lots of citizens working lots of improved tiles. One way to achive fast gowth rate is to employ post-despotism irrigation projects and to prioritize aquaduct construction. In this case, obtaining luxury resources is very important to allow high population with maximum science spending. Extremely dense city placement is another way to get massive early growth from limited land area without the happiness problems.

On this map, those who took advantage of the flood plain wheat tile to boost early growth probably were able to manage the fastest early tech rates. The jungle infested starting island also mandated a considerable number of workers to allow more cities to grow beyond size 2 and work roaded tiles.