*Spoiler4* - Gotm20-Spain - End Game Submitted

[Aurian]

Well, this was my first game at Deity level.
Despite this, I decided to play the 'open' class, due to the fact that I finished in the upper half during last GOTM.
(I played the 'open' class on civ3v1.29)

And I won

I quickly discovered the choke points to the northeast, and blocked them. English scouts travelled through them, but their settlers couldn't anymore.
My first settlers aimed to block France from expanding north.

I could keep up in science (only 2 or 3 behind), because many wars among the AI broke out. I can't remember a period that there was no fighting going on among them.
And the fact that the AI doesn't use suicide galleys (I did, of course) helped very much.

Fairly soon everyone was constantly at war with someone else. I even had a period that I only had 3 civs at peace with me. Luckily they were my neighbours, so my enemies couldn't come into my territory
My neighbours (France + England) dearly paid for this, because they were annihilated throughout the game. But they served me well....

I built the UN myself, and had two votes. During both votes I was at peace with everyone, and I took a risk in clicking 'yes'.
I competed with the Iroquois, who voted for themselves. I voted for myself too, and everyone else abstained...
8 turns later I started to suck up with everyone (mpp works very well for this), and succeeded well enough in this to get enough votes 2 turns later

I enjoyed this game very much, and I'm glad I have a Deity win on my status now.

 

[mabellino]

1.14f Conquest
Well no surprise that I lost but I did get my best ever score and for the first time have been able to build part of my spaceship!
My mistake was to turn turtle and just try and survive without having a gameplan. I definately had deity paranoia factor(tm) which wasn't helped by the Zulu being on steroids right from the start. As posted earlier I was hopelessly behind in tech.. the Japanese built the UN in 1430ad or thereabouts whilst I was still researching invention (ouch!). I did manage to catch up somewhat by cranking out the cash and paying huge amounts of gold upfront.. my rep was trashed because of the celts being wiped out the turn after I bought a tech for gpt. Aaaagh!
I also completed my first successful espionage missions by planting spies in India and Japan.. My spy exposed many attempts to plant spies and turfed out the Japanese spy in Toledo (my new capital). I think it was just about worth the money.
I entered the modern era in 1838 (pitiful, I know!) and soon learnt I had no aluminium. I traded with the Iroquois for some of theirs and about 2 turns later some turns up in the north of my territory.. Next began a game of catch up.. I checked F10 every turn and saw that the Japanese had one component left to build but hadn't started it.. they could have won about 30turns earlier than they did if they'd started it when they had the tech!
Anyway long story short, they started building it the turn after I completed Apollo and launched when I had 4 components built...
Picture gallery time:
Minimap at the end:

Histograph:

Final Scores:

Cracker's Questions
1. I felt on the whole that this was an easy way in to playing Deity, I especially liked having the extra settler but I think more experienced players would have used it better! My feelings throughout the ages changed from "I hope I make it to Steam Power" to "I wonder if I'll actually get to build my ship?" My confidence increased throughout and I feel that this game has taught me so much.. not least because I have been able to pull together many different aspects gleaned from this forum.
2. Didn't play GOTM18
3. I got really lucky with the RNG... my first suicide galley made it across the waves to contact the new world... shame I blew it by selling my contacts straight away!
I didn't fight in a single war so consequently didn't generate any leaders but I noticed on the replay that Japan got 12!
4. Whoops.... totally forgot that UU's triggered golden age.. maybe I should have gone to war then? Wonder triggered GA would have been nigh on impossible since I was sooo far behind in tech!

To summarise...
I need to bite the bullet and fight... cultural expansion is way too difficult on Deity and waiting for the other AI's to wipe each other out isn't advisable if you want to win!

 

[Offa]

I won by spaceship in 1884. In game score was 9192 which gave a final score of 10226. I presume the jason score is calculated on this final score which would give me 6157 jason points.

When I built the UN in 1605 my in game score was 4591. If I had won a vote then the bonus would have given me a score of 7269 which corresponds to a jason score of 6813.

Obviously neither of these scores are all that good. However, there does seem to be too much difference between the 2 jason scores for what was essentially the same game. I thought that the jason score was supposed to smooth out such discrepencies.

I tried feeding in a final score of 7269 in 1605ad in the calculator and got scores of 7139 for a 20k culture win, 6813 for diplo and 6895 for space. These all seem too close as surely a space or 20k culture win in 1605 is far harder than a diplo.

Is there something wrong with my calculator?

 

[Merle Corey]

[edit]
ptw1.21, open
[\edit]

Well, all in all, it went ok. I won, but not large. Space
race, 1862, game score 3513.

Like many others my initial feelings starting this game were
those of paranoia and fear. As a result I played the early
game very conservatively, just hoping to put up a
respectable showing. Watching the replay of my game, you
get the sense in the early going that the Spanish player is
just dead meat. Every civ had at least 3 cities - most had
4 or 5, one, maybe Zulu, had 7 or 8 - before I built the
second one. But I survived, and learned a few useful things
along the way that I can use next time out.

AAR my game most resembles: Trajam's.

I had fun playing it as it was a near thing. Rubber was a
very rare resource. Zulu got a monopoly on it early,
forcing me to secure a source on their borders, which took a
very long and bloody (for the Zulu anyway) war. They were
overwhelmingly strong by comparison to me for most of the
game, and very aggressive, either starting or triggering all
our wars. In the end, I joined them in an MPP. I still
managed to win two rather long wars with them. I was behind
in tech the whole game. I achieved my Starship by stealing
first Fission and then at the last, Laser, the same turn I
finished researching Superconductor. I captured the UN from
France after they started building Starship components, and
tried several UN votes with three candidates; me, Zulu and
Japan. No joy though.

Cracker's Qs

1) For at least two thirds of the game I felt desperately
behind in tech. During the first third I was always behind
in cities, military strength and tech. During the last
third I felt like I at least had a chance at winning.
Resources were a problem for the first half or so of the
game. Rubber in particular was a problem for me due to
warfare up until almost the modern age. Overall, good game
because of the challenge.

2) Didn't play it.

3) Not offhand. I got a fair number of elites and leaders.
Bombardment of cities seems to work better (?? more often
??) than the last patch.

4) The conquistador unit was interesting to play with. I
usually don't bother with explorers, but I did build a
handful of these for mostly scouting. Not as powerful a uu
as the panzer, but better than the f-15.

 

[Lux_willow]

conquest 1,29

Ok before I post my accounts I have one serious question:

I lost some save files aproximatly 30 turns worth of saves because of a computer crash. I replayed the game but the results were completly different... I would have won in both but in different ways and with different timmings... I have no idea which would give a higher score.

Can I still send in my save games?

 

[Lux_willow]

Conquest 1,29

SO I managed to squeeze a win in my first deity game.
In retrospective I could have done a lot better but most importantly I learned extremely valuable lessons.

Final score: 7082 spaceship launched in 1842
Could have been better since I could have built the spaceship at least 8 turns before... but I doubt it would make much difference in the final score.

The early starting conditions were the best on any civ game I have ever played, since I usually start in rocky or desert landscapes or in the middle of junggle.

Random results weren't that determining early on at least not that I realised. It took some galleys to get accross the ocean but not too many or too few, cultural flips occured in times and places that didn't affect the overal results. One random result however had dramatic consequences as can be told below

The missionary sucks!!! It is way to weak for when it appears. It should have at least the same stats has a knight and have the same resource requirements. I used it only to start a GA and for some minor special ops. IMHO it's even worse than the f15 in combat terms.

I entered modern times during a long hard war against the huge well defended Indian cities, each with 5 or more infantry and most over size 18. I bombed most cities to rubble with my artillery, and waqs very upset when my hords of ellite tanks kept being destoied by infantry with only one slash in the health bar defending size 6 cities
The indian landed in the new world and destroied Habana.
Eventually I was forced out of democracy has the people rebelled into anarchy. After who knows how many turns I finally managed to take the big prize: Dehly the city of wonders and its Copernicus observatory, newton college, sistine chapel and bachs cathedral along with a uranium mine. SHortly after India was down to one city on the shores of the inner sea. In spite of the ferocious assault and loss of cities the Indians were still the tech leader. Since they had techs I didn't have. I stole one tech from them (my first ever) I then signed peace in exchange for all their gold and 200gpt since they still had one tech I didn't have: sattelites and that I couldn't afford to buy or steal.
A couple of turns latter some conquered indian cities started flipping. 20 turns latter I manged to get sattelites from the indians and declared war and whipped them out in 2 turns. Thus ended the Indo-hispanic conflict that lasted a couple hundred years. The difficulty and extremelly long time necessary to whipe out the indians were extremly deterimental to my final score.

In the meantime I managed to build 3 modern age wonders. First I used a palace pre-build to build the UN and then used 2 GLeaders to build Seti and Internet. I didn't build Manhattan because I don't like nuclear wars. They are too dirty... literaly.
Since everione in the world was furious with me I hold off elections.

The space race started a couple of turns after the end of the indo-hispanic war with the Iroquois starting to build the spaceship, after they defeated the Jappanese happily they were way back on tech.

Then the Iroqois built manhatan and I was forced to start an arms race building ICBMs, nucsubs and tackNukes like crazy.
I had just built my very first ICBM when the iroquois got Superconductor and wouldn't sell.
Here the story line splits:
The first time I played my spy was caught and war ensued.
I nuked the Iroquoi's only uranium mine and got the 2 only surviving nations: Kelts and Aztecs against the Iroquois.
A couple of turns later the Iroqois most modern unit was the mechinf, when finallyh I managed to find there oil wells on the map they were helpless has my armours started taking their cities at 2 per turn. The Aztecs had no resources since the Iroq bombers wreked havoc in Aztec land. It was then that civ crashed... stupidly I lost the auto-saves and was forced to replay about 30 turns... starting again just before the espionage incident

This time the spy got away and I got superconductor. The space race was on. I managed to build the longevity and cure for cancer and build my spaceship before the Iroq. While building up my military (nukes nukes and more nukes, nucsubs, battleships, carriers, etc) to protect from an iroqois desesperate attempt. I considered invading america but the information that the Iroq were matching my ICBM's hold me off and by the end spain had 8 ICBM + 12 tacnuc and Iroq had 7ICBM + 2 tacnuc... no point in wrecking the world so in 1842 a ship set out from Madrid to conquer the stars.


I could have played better but that would have required way too much concentration and note taking , also I noticed that I still have a lot to learn about civIII, mostly because I'm so conditioned from playing civII. This was the 1st time I had more than 4 highly productive cities in my heartland all thanks to the pre-game discussion.
But for the life of me I can't manage to figure out how sir Pleb and Moonsinger managed to advance so fast so early. I just can't... I mean... how did they manage to invade those huge Zullu so fast? the AI could throw in much more units than the spanish cities could produce them... and navy building? how did anyone managed to build a large navy to invade the new world with so few good coastal cities?

 

[Yndy]

ptw 1.21 Predator
Woo hoo. I finally made it. Game submitted. It will probably take half a day for me to write a summary but the bottom line is: Conquest victory in 1485 AD. Never made it to the Industrial age or even to the tanks. It was a cavalry vs Infantry war from 1000AD to 1485AD.

Edit: ingame score 11725; Jason 9500+. I will post the links to my reports when I'm all done. As seen on Xevious partial list, I'm no way near SirPleb's performance. Actually my initial win target was 1250AD but stiff resistance delayed it with 50 turns. I got to the domination treshold around 1250 AD though.

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by Lux_willow
But for the life of me I can't manage to figure out how sir Pleb and Moonsinger managed to advance so fast so early. I just can't... I mean... how did they manage to invade those huge Zullu so fast? the AI could throw in much more units than the spanish cities could produce them... and navy building? how did anyone managed to build a large navy to invade the new world with so few good coastal cities?

Technically, I'm still under a banning restriction from posting here, but I think I deserve to give myself a break now and then; therefore, I could unban myself. Ok, done! Now I can post.

I didn't really hook up iron and Saltpeter until my civ was about 160 tiles from the domination limit. Most of the time, I left three workers and 1 horseman on top of the saltpeter resource and another group of three workers and 1 horseman on the iron resource. That way, I could instantly hook up salpeter and iron as needed, then I used those two horsemans to disconnect both saltpeter and iron immediately after I upgraded my units. Since I had Cleo's Workshop, it costed me only 50 gold to upgrade a horseman to cavalry and 40 gold for a spearman to musketman. Overall, my civ produced any where between 1 and 2 dozens new cavalries in every 4 turns. During the beginning of my Industrial Age, I was still building spearmans and horsemans. What can I say...I really love building horseman.

The Zulu was the biggest threat in my game, but they were also my best friend for a long time too; therefore until the very end, I had never gone to war against them.

About the Navy, other than my six galleons for transporting troops between the two continents, I have no other ships. Other than the English who had two Man-O-Wars running around, the rest of the AIs didn't build any warship.

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by Yndy
Edit: ingame score 11725; Jason 9500+. I will post the links to my reports when I'm all done. As seen on Xevious partial list, I'm no way near SirPleb's performance. Actually my initial win target was 1250AD but stiff resistance delayed it with 50 turns. I got to the domination treshold around 1250 AD though.

That's a very good score Yndy. With the bonus for playing Predator, I think your final score would be way over 10K.

 

[Dislak]

Originally posted by Moonsinger


About the Navy, other than my six galleons for transporting troops between the two continents, I have no other ships. Other than the English who had two Man-O-Wars running around, the rest of the AIs didn't build any warship.

The english just loved Man-O-Wars. They had about 10 of them always bombarding my northern cities whenever I went to war with them. The Japanese had an amazing Navy as well.

 

[flexo]

For that preliminary score table a few pages back I scored 5658 in game points, didn't bother to calculate my jason score.

 

[GreyBeard]

This is my first post. I just finished gotm20, my 2nd gotm. This is also my first game at Deity level. I survived till 1860ad by kissing Zulu butt for 6,000 years, then lost by space race. I've been addicted to civ for years and now I'm addicted to gotm. I like the helpfull atmosphere and friendly competition of this site. Now I am going to take a look at what is coming up for next month.

classpen

ingame score: 3955

end game: loss, space race

 

[SirPleb]

Originally posted by Lux_willow
But for the life of me I can't manage to figure out how sir Pleb and Moonsinger managed to advance so fast so early. I just can't... I mean... how did they manage to invade those huge Zullu so fast? the AI could throw in much more units than the spanish cities could produce them... and navy building? how did anyone managed to build a large navy to invade the new world with so few good coastal cities?

There are a number of things to consider when invading a supposedly stronger enemy. (The Zulu had a larger military than mine till I was about half way through them, so size is clearly not the determining factor ) Some things which can help:
1) I used nothing but Knights and Cavalry. Most of the Zulu troops were weaker units, at least defensively and most battles were fought with me attacking and them defending.
2) I attack with large stacks. There's no point 1/2 destroying the enemy in any one location. Their wounded units go somewhere to heal (they've got the roads) and come back to fight again. If I'm going to hurt some units at all I try to make sure I'll finish them off too.
3) Use terrain advantages heavily! 2 move Knights are good at this, 3 move Cavalry better again. You can often find a mountain, hills, or forest within two tiles of a target. Move your units there and pause to attack from the defensive location next turn. If the enemy attacks on their turn you get a nice defense bonus.
4) Avoid terrain penalties. E.g. if a target city has a river beside it, Knights and again especially Cavalry can often attack it from the other side without needing an extra turn, avoiding the river penalty. Another e.g. if the enemy sends a couple of units past your advancing lines toward your cities, and they advance using mountains/hills, check if there's a place where they'll have to cross some level terrain to reach a target. If there is, ignore them till they reach that spot, then destroy them there.
5) At the start of a war against a strong opponent I go slowly. Don't use all your units at once and end up with most of them wounded for a turn. Invade a bit at a time. The enemy will come to you in the early stages. You want to have a border town they'll come to which has no defensive bonus terrain within one tile of the town itself. Then the 1 move enemy troops are forced to approach across flat lands, within reach of your road system. When they get close, on plains/grass/desert, use Knights or Cavalry to nail them and retreat to safety on the same turn.

Re weak coastal cities: I rushed ships using cash in a number of coastal towns just a bit before I needed them. I didn't worry about whether the towns had any real production capacity or harbors, just bought the boats.

 

[drewshark]

This being my first deity win, I do not want to diminish my enthusiasm but boy did I overestimate my opponents in this game. If there is one thing that I learned it is that just because my military advisor says "compared to these guys we're weak" doesn't mean we can't go after them.
I have not posted since the first post purposely to avoid any interference or help with my game. I was pretty lucky to get my third caravel across the western ocean only lost two in suicide runs. My game really could have been alot different had I been more aggressive in my warring efforts. It seems that everyone was mad at me or at war and after my experience versus the Persians in the last and only deity game I ever played, my simple goal was to survive only to realize that so much more was possible. I was behind in tech early in the game but caught up trading with the New World before anyone else on my continent could communicate with them. After everyone knew each other it was a battle for me to balance tech trading along with war. If I could do it over, I would have aligned with the Zulus much earlier to help take out the Celts, whom I finished off first but after much hard work. After making easy work of the English (and leaving them one measley city) I aligned with the monstrous Zulus against the French who fell quickly.
It is interesting to see how strong the Ottomans were in many games. For my game, they were wiped out quickly by the Zulus. After taking the French and being loved by the New World, I could see the final game taking shape. I could have taken the Zulu, but, as I said earlier, I overestimated their numbers and stayed aligned with them through MPP's the rest of the game. I was planning on leaving the Indians to their three cities, but the Zulus dragged me into a war and I figured I might as well grab a few cities and some land out of it. I triggered a golden age by taking out the last English city and also got my second GL, whom I used for TOE, which vaulted me into the tech lead, which I never lost.

The Iroqouois and Japanese took out America and we were unfortuantely left with 4 civs, 2 on each continent, and a potential stalemate for a diplomatic win. When I build the UN around 1400 AD, I could not get a majority of 3 anyway I sliced it. Japan was fighting with the Zulu and I had to declare war for a few turns about 100 years earlier, and they were still furious. To make matters worse, Iroquois voted for the Zulus also. So we were 1.2.abstain in the voting and I never called for another vote. I then was left with one alternative, space ship, which I completed in 1700 AD and launched, though I almost messed up letting the Iroquois win. I had a spy in Communist Zuzuland but did not know where the Iroquois were in developement. Before I knew it, they were even in Science with me and actually had Nuclear Power a turn before me. I figured I was done but the lame Iroquois (and Zuzuland as well) learned Advanced Flight next, ha ha, I felt very lucky and 2 turns later launched my ship with a score of 7757, not bad for a non domination game and my first deity win.

To answer some of the points Cracker made at the start of this thread;
1) Early on I really just wanted to survive but realized there was quite a bit of room to expand. I felt the resources were conveniently placed to give us a quick expansion like civ with natural granaries in our first two or three cities.
As the game progressed, I was amazed that as was able to overpower some usually powerful civs in a deity game. I think it is safe to say that the name "Deity" scared me alot in this game and affected my usually aggressive play.
Towards the end, it was just a matter of time to finish a meticulously played 77 hour game that I was flat out relieved to just finish.
2) To be honest, I didn't even draw on GOTM 18 (which I never submitted but finished 3 days late). I never even though that dominating my continent was possible like I did with the Celts in April so it never even was a thought.
3) I felt pretty fortunate with the RNG in this game netting 6 GL's which I used to build armies, FP, TOE, and a few SETI and a space ship part. I also got my third suicide galley accross to America setting up a great trade network for a few hundred years. I never really took a gamble in battle but I did notice a big difference with the deity defensive bonus. When you have 10 cavalry stalling against 2 or 3 muskets, you realize what a bonus that is.


All this said, I really had a great time in GOTM 20 and am looking forward to 21 though I need to speed up my play, maybe putting together less sessions of longer play rather than a few turns here and there leading to some slow play.

 

[Yndy]

Moonsinger,
I think there’s no score bonus for playing predator, only bragging rights Still I would probably get in the top 20 as I got used to.

I loved your disconnect resources technique; I tried to use it in my game as well but my core cities would bring 40 spt (with factories; Edit: and Hoover's) and building 20shield horses seemed like a waste.

Lux_willow,
For me wasting the Ottomans and the Zulu was the easy part. They had been fighting each other continuously from 500BC to the time they died. Ottoman counter-attack was about 10 Siphai and the Zulu one was about 10 Cavs.

I had two productive ports that built half my transport fleet and some four ironclads. I also rushed a lot of ships and lost a lot too

 

[Lux_willow]

really amazing strategy Moonsinger!! I would never had thought about that wicked disconnect ressources strategy. I wonder if it works in more advanced settings? Like upgrading tanks to MA? or Rifle to Inf.

Sir Pleb: I already use most of those strategies but I seem to be too shy on my attacks early on... I have bad experiences with highly improbable events like one lonely pikeman defeating several cavalry or a single infantry on the red defeating 5 ellite tanks, even though those events are rare they have forced me to gather overwhelming odds when attacking cities... however now I'm coming to the conclusion that such freak events might be due to the defensive bonus of wonders and other buildings... BTW where can I get a list of the defensive bonus of buildings?

I usually don't buy military units... something I'll be pondering more often in the future.

What diplomatic strattegies did you guys (Moonsinger, Sir Pleb Yndi) use? Always war? Selective alliances gangging up on the big kids to anihillation and then turning on the next big kid? One on one wars?

 

[Yndy]

I usually don't buy military units... something I'll be pondering more often in the future.

I only buy them when I have loads of gold (over 4k) and a high income from tax (1k). I have to do something with the money when I don’t have to save them for upgrades.

What diplomatic strattegies did you guys (Moonsinger, Sir Pleb Yndi) use? Always war? Selective alliances gangging up on the big kids to anihillation and then turning on the next big kid? One on one wars?

I try to use an always war for the AI to give them something to do. Even if the AIs rarely seem to take one city from the other, they do use up huge armies. I use selective alliances to make sure the neighbors fight each other and not some civ 100 tiles away.
In this game I made an alliance with France against the Ottomans only to weaken the French. Then an alliance with the Ottomans and Celts against India while I dealt with France. I allied the Ottomans against the Celts when I attacked the Celts. I made an alliance with the Zulu when the Ottomans sneak-attacked me and another one when I sneak-attacked them I made an alliance with the Americans and Iroquois against the Aztecs to slow tech pace in the new world. The last alliance I made was with Japan and America against Iroquois.

 

[pterrok]

Open, 1.29

Very freaky game...

I'm not usually a warmonger and it really hurt in this game. By the time I caught up in quantity I was so far behind in quality that it wasn't funny...

I never made it to the modern age--I never even got Tanks!--and all the AI left were at the modern age hundreds of years before me!

Where it really gets weird is that the Ottomans built the UN circa 1450 AD. Since they were at war with most everyone they never called a vote. But when they built it, I kind of resigned myself to a spaceship loss a little later.

The Ottomans built the Manhattan Project...
The Ottomans built the Internet...
The Ottomans built the Seti Project...
The Ottomans built the Cure for Cancer...
The Ottomans built Longevity Treatment...
I even saw a Stealth Bomber fly by--and I've never even built one of those myself--ever!

...and STILL no space ship launch!

I had made an Alliance and ROP with the Ottomans right after he jumped me and took a bunch of cities. So there I was, fighting and winning with artillery and Cavalry against enemy Tanks and even Mech Infantry! It took a LONG time to run the attacks and move my own infantry up to defend and rush walls in cities, etc. I wanted the game to end but it kept on going, turn after turn after turn...

So we take down the English, Zulu and Indians. Then I crossed the ocean (finally) and with my buddy the Ottomans we took down Japan and Aztecs. We were working on the Americans which would have left just me, the Ottomans and the Iroquois--the points leader and big boy on the other continent.

The Ottomans had founded only two little cities in the new world on Hispanola, and the Iroquois got a few on our continent as they helped defeat the Indians.

So where was the Uranium? Other people reported space race losses, so there MUST have been uranium somewhere. Or was it that Space ship was disabled for the Ottomans and Iroqouos but not the other AI or something like that?

Anyway, just when I started to get my hopes up that I could get a Histographic win--wouldn't THAT have been odd! <g>--it looks like I then had a 100K Cultural LOSS to the Ottomans! (Something else you don't see everyday...)

So, 3875 points at 1878 AD. Maybe I'll be the highest scoring loser this time--unlike in the Roman game where I was the SECOND best loser! (I even lost at losing!)


PS -- I never got a GA since I didn't really realize I needed to get Navigation to get the Missionary. By the time I did, they was not chance he was gonna take down even a 1 point Infantry!


<edit> Added that the Ottomans built the Internet.

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by Lux_willow
really amazing strategy Moonsinger!!

I can't take credit for that. I learned that strategy from one of the top players here (I think it was originally used by Aeson, but it could come from SirPleb).

I would never had thought about that wicked disconnect ressources strategy. I wonder if it works in more advanced settings? Like upgrading tanks to MA? or Rifle to Inf.

Yes it does work for MA and Mech Infantry. For MA, just disconnect Aluminum so that you can build tank for upgrade; however, since there are only 20 shields different between MA and tank, we may as well build MA to start with. We don't benefit much from building Rifleman for upgrade to Mech Infantry either. Since the Mech Infantry costs 110 shields and the Rifleman costs 80, there is only 30 shield saving there. With factory and Hoover Dam, 30 extra shields is really nothing; therefore, we may as well directly build Mech Infantry and MA.

Since there is 50 shields different between building horseman and cavalry and most importantly 50 shields is hard to come by during the Middle Age, the horseman to cavalry upgrade path yields the most cost effective. Please keep in mind that many people would consider this strategy an exploit but it wasn't as bad as the artillery exploit.

What diplomatic strattegies did you guys (Moonsinger, Sir Pleb Yndi) use? Always war? Selective alliances gangging up on the big kids to anihillation and then turning on the next big kid? One on one wars?

In my game, I rallied them to gang up on the small kids first. If I didn't win by Domination, it would be tough against the Zulus because they were too powerful. Once away, I won by domination because I was running out of energy and I didn't want to go against the Zulus.

 

[simonsezz]

Just finished with an 'accidental' domination win in 1918....wanted conquest but oops....and greebley asked if he looked close to domination on page one.....answer you actually look exactly like me with a slightly diff. configuration in new world...you may have been within a tile or two of domination.
Could have had dimplomatic win in the 1700's which i should have taken the way things turned out but live and learn i guess.
Final score was 8816 in game...not sure what Jason will be..probably worse.....so i'll probably be middle of the pack like last month.
RNG events affecting my game were my very first galley made it across to new world allowing me to catch up on techs in late ancient age and keep abreast in medieval age and eventually lead through industrial and modern. Also the Zulu were huge and extremely aggressive taking out the Ottomans in about 2000 bc leaving the Ottomans with a whopping score of 37!
I felt like I was gonna get my butt kicked by the Zulu and France in the ancient age but was able to keep France Polite or Gracious which protected my South flank allowing me to take over England to secure northeastern choke points......in the medieval age I actually thought i was gonna lose as the Zulu continued their aggressive ways with a sneak attack with hordes of UU spear archers and swords costing me a couple of my 'equator wall off the south as a hedge against a French backstab cities'. France helped drive them back before sneak attacking me themselves in the middle of my Golden Age.....turbulent times indeed.
Through the industrial and modern ages I was as happy as eight luxuries could make a guy and was just trying to decide how to win so quite content on the whole......no one seriously threatened me at all after the middle ages and the tech pace slowed so much I was almost able to pick and choose which techs I wanted and how fast.
Also on the RNG front the Iroquois never got aluminum other than for a turn or two in trade with the americans, not sure how strategic resource generation is set up in gotm though, is it still random after initial discoveries???
Anyway, other than passing on an earlier diplo. win....Zulu would have been my opponent and they were at war with EVERYONE and i had 2 or 3 gracious's.....and screwing up the conquest win I had a relatively smooth progression from nervous defensiveness to victory......
The spanish UU is absolutely useless as a COMBAT unit ....it's stats are WAY to low for how late it comes....tried it strategically (cutting resources) in a pre gotm test but after initial success they were all dead on comps turn.....huge waste of production on first turn of war unless you can get ALL significant strategic resources cut from comp. civs. The only good thing about Conquistadors in my opinion is you can use them for a "Golden Age at Will" sort of thing........for a UU that just isn't a lot of benefit.
Just to summarize as far as map goes.....saw early the opportunity and security choke points northeast and south would provide and took full advantage taking England out first and expanding straight east to inland see to wall off the equator...this fact alone may have been the reason I felt the win came easily after the initial sneak attack by the Zulu and then the French....French attack ended up netting me most of their territory, pyramids, great library, and a couple of other wonders I'm not quite sure of anyway (had every wonder in the end, building ALL modern wonders myself)