*Spoiler4* SPECIAL - Must have submitted Gotm19

[LKendter]

I will have to watch more closely, but I am use to getting from the following formula: (Population - 1) / 2. This has held pretty well for me.

Maybe I didn't notice before, but I don't remember razing a city before and getting nothing from a large city.

 

[Renata]

Arrghh computer ate my post. Too tired to redo. Will come back and edit this when I get a chance.

Edit: Ok here we go. Here's Rome after founding their first four cities. (India's second city is from a hut - it was founded ~ 3600 BC. Quite likely the reason India wound up the bully on the other continent, too.)

Here's them with 10 cities, apparently just after they had built their last allowed initial settler. Two of the cities on the map (one Indian, one Celt) were founded after the Romans' tenth.

Rome was very strong in my game, particularly for an initially isolated civ. They declared war on me twice in the early going when I refused tribute demands (them being so far away and all ...), although both times I was able to sue for peace before my cities were directly threatened. I brought them into the war against the Celts and they razed a Celtic city on the very next turn - they were probably about to sneak-attack themselves. I didn't catch up to Rome on the histograph until after I had swallowed up the Celts and was halfway through Carthage, and even then they still showed up stronger than anyone else remaining -- even India, who had conquered Spain --- so I never actually attacked them. They definitely did slow down after that huge starting advantage, though.

As far as city placement goes, I'm not sure what if any conclusions I can draw that I wasn't already aware of. Here's a screenshot of Rome's starting island at the end of the game. You might have to increase screen brightness to see it well.

I cropped off Ravenna on the southeastern peninsula in the interests of not having to scroll - hope it works - and the two southernmost city names aren't displaying. It's fairly easy to see some of their priorities. After Rome, the next city is Veii - located at the site of future horses. After that, Antium - in the middle of the ivory patch. I have no idea what their fourth city, the right-hand one of the southern pair, was supposed to capture. Interestingly, though, they didn't really lock up the spices with their first 10 cities. IIRC, I could have settled on a nearby unoccupied patch of jungle and gotten both spices with a culture expansion if I'd wanted to. (I didn't, deciding to go for the ivory I didn't have natively instead as a priority, and not really wanting to provoke Rome at that stage either.) It's also fairly easy to see that the AI doesn't really prioritize fresh water *or* coastal access very highly -- just look at Antium! -- and that they settle their cities very far apart with many wasted tiles. I think I can count 7 or 8 south of Lutetia alone, although it's possible they would have redeemed some of them if I hadn't interfered with Bolu.

Their worker development is also horrendous, much worse than I would expect from an emperor AI at that stage of the game, especially given the fast start. Did you say that their workers were modded in some fashion to slow them down? It seems to have worked - despite having more cities than anyone else early on in my game and despite getting fairly early contact with my continent due to the naval prioritization, Rome sufferered from the same early-middle-ages research slowdown as everyone else.

Renata

 

[DaveShack]

In my game, India was the big powerhouse. Don't know why Rome didn't have as dramatic a lead in my game as others who have posted.

I played on PTW 1.21f if that makes any difference. I'll try to attach the histographs -- hope this is the right way to do it... As you can see this wasn't pretty, but I lasted longer this time than last month, and on a higher level. Progress, I guess...

Cracker, A complete set of autosaves through 1635 AD is available if you need to look at any for debugging purposes. (I have a monster hard drive and some programming skills, so a background copy is made of every turn's autosave...) Of course if you need a strong human player involved, it definitely won't help...

Culture graph

Power graph

 

[Sirp]

Yup, India was the most powerful in my game as well. Rome shot out to a lead but then fell back.

Rome was armed entirely with infantry (Legionaries, MDIs, Pikes, Longbowmen...), and though they had lots and lots of troops, I slaughtered them all with the loss of only three sipahi.

I couldn't capture some Roman workers, they dropped dead instead...

-Sirp.

 

[LKendter]

My game also had a monster India who took all of Spain by himself. Monster India also seems to be the trend with the games.

 

[Shillen]

Hmm India was very weak in my game so I decided to go back to the replay and try to figure out why.

Surprisingly, India popped a settler in my game as well, or perhaps they were given one I don't know. My map at 3150BC looks exactly the same as Renata's.

Here is the turning point though. Spain must have just gotten really lucky with the RNG or something. In 2270 BC they captured India's free settler city.

In 1350BC Spain razed one of India's core cities as well. India hadn't captured any cities during the war yet. In 530BC the war was still going and the Spanish razed yet another Indian core city. In 250BC the Spanish raze another city, but this one was far from their capital at least. In 150BC they raze another city fairly close to Delhi. Wow AI-AI wars usually don't last this long especially when one of them is getting the short end of the stick.

Around 10AD seems to mark the end of the war for now. India would get finished off later in the game though. Notice all the Spanish cities surrounding Delhi. Kind of hard to do anything when your core cities are all controlled by another civ.

 

[Greebley]

In my game, rome had an early gain culture and strength. They did not keep the lead however

Here is the culture graph. At the end of the game, India, Rome, and myself are about equal. I am nost sure why Rome failed to maintain a lead over India. I would have thought that they would have kept their early advantave, especially with their early doubled cultural buildings. Tech advancement for all civs was fairly even, with only china falling behind by 2-3 techs.

Rome did have a huge army and navy, but other than attacking the fog, he did not do very much with it.

China's poor start must have been due to losing their first settler. They don't create their second city until 2190 bc:

So a bad start for an AI seems to hurt them culturally, but an early start does not help. I thought my game a good test case due to its incredible stability. On the mainland with the 4 civs no city changed hands for the first 5230 years! Rome killed a few indian cities on its home continent and the island to one side of rome changed sides, but those were pretty minor

Here is 230 BC when the last city on the mainland was founded by China:

And 1230 ad when war broke out:

Even then the same cities went back and forth as it was 2 vs 2 + rome and I on opposite sides not doing much. The same 2-3 citys switched back and forth and by an odd coincidence the final result is identical.

(Minor spelling edit and added the following on the AI war)

 

[Sirp]

The simple explanation is that although Rome had a very good head start, it really is a dismal civ for building culture. It builds very few cultural buildings, and against religious India it just fell behind.

Rome had a huge army in my game too, but my sipahi made very short work of it

It did cause me a little more trouble at sea though, since the best ships I got were caravels.

-Sirp.

 

[Boyd]

My game played out very differently to many of you.

I don't recall the date but had an early war with Rome who bought contact with me through one of my neighbours. Rome invaded on the northeast near my silks.

Spain and Egypt struggled for supremacy on their continent with Egypt becoming a monster in terms of area. The Ottomans establshed a four city bridgehead of Egytpian controlled Spain which brought peace with Egypt and India (the Sipahi were amazing). Egypt launched a sneak attack and drove the Ottomans off the continent. I was able to bring Rome in as an ally (Celts went early'ish and Carthage much later both a result of the sipahi but both were gone for this).

It was at this point that I really started to notice the Roman behaviour. They were not as nearly as aggressive as they usually are and their culture and science were amazing!

More desulotory struggles with Egypt reduced them to thier Chinese possessions and Indian expansion was never an issue.

At this point (late industrial era for the Ottomans) I was starting to wonder if the Romans were going to go for space. I mean they were so technologically advanced and they were staying put... there assistance in fighting Egypt was an intense shore bombardment.

Anyway, with Egypt gone and all but a small 6 -7 city independent India, I finally got espionage from India and successfully placed a spy in democratic Rome. As I was not in the modern era I could not check on the space race but my spy announced several Roman components almost immediately and Rome had been in the modern era for some time.

I guess I panicked! I brought my transports home and declared war on Rome and bribed India to help. Rome destroyed my coast nearest their continent (bombers). I did not initially have tanks and suddenly Roman mech infantry and modern armour were landing in the south of my home continent. India lost their city on the island east of Rome and my efforts at landing were frightening. My army was penned in beside the Roman northeast city (shades of Anzio.) I could reinforce about as fast as I lost, but all my artillery was elsewhere and Rome was raising the southwestern part of my continent after running amock with modern armour.

I was not making any significant head way as Rome was so technologically advanced. After clearing out their invasion with loads of tanks (if they had landed a few more transport loads it would have been very bad as opposed to horrible... (NB., if you shell trnasports and the covering ships, the AI will call off the invasions so artillery can be a real life saver)) I sought peace which they gave, again that was unexpected.

However, to fight me Rome swithched from democracy and lost a huge productive edge in building the space ship, so I declared war on India who was still at war with Rome and the result was a domination victory but Rome had about eight (8) or nine (9) of the required components (replay is currently not working on my system so I cannot trace this as well as I wish I could).

So, in conclusion, Rome's technological and cultural lead worried me for some time and when I finally took notice it scared the bejeezus out of me. Modern armour and mech inf versus infantry and sipahi?

Roman control of the sea did not matter too much except that it ensured that I never could mount a serious invasion, and the AI's inability to really pursue amphibious warfare was a blessing.

Cracker asked about emotions, well I was pretty stressed at parts and I really figured it was all over when my home continent was invaded.

Hope this is useful.

 

[cracker]

Renata,

The Roman workers were not modded to slow them down. The Romans had 4 eqWorkers to start with.

The location at the far southeast was an iron source.

In the testing replays, it was amazing to see the Roman AI always target the resource locations. The resource locations you see on that large island were randomly generated by the original map seed.

I tested just to see what would happen and regardless where I moved the horses and the iron, the Roman AI would always settle on them.

The settler that went to the far southeast position for the iron seem like it was on the magical mystery tour at first because I could find no reason to spend 10 turns hiking that far while bypassing a number of good city sites.
The ingame RNG effects could effect some decisions but notice how consistent the city placement is due to being isolated from other human influences.

 

[Renata]

@ Cracker - knew there had to be something! Should've done a clear-map before commenting; thanks for the input. Veddy veddy interesting, btw.

@ Greebley - I think the Celts lost a settler in my game like China seemed to in yours, accounting for them having only two cities by the time Rome settled their 10th. Carthage got a golden age very early on that wasn't wonder-triggered; bet they took a pot shot at a Celtic settler pair.

Renata

 

[Green Light]

Tought to share few screenshots too about the Roman process.

Seems like the Romans always built their 4 first cities like this, as they have done so in all the other spoilers too so far.

They must have had those 3 additional settlers from the beginning in addition to the starting one.
I dont think its otherwise possible to expand so fast, unless there were huts that always gave settlers to them.
Seems like the Indians had one too, or popped from hut, but that didnt help them in my game.

The early cities helped them somewhat in expansion, but not so much, as after they had these 10 cities,
they didnt build new ones for a long time, but only focused on infrastructure & military.

I contacted the Romans at 1150 BC, but unfortunately had a save only at 1400 bc and 1000 bc,
so here's the 1000 bc shot of their lands. (bad image quality due the downsizing)

Their power, culture and score all were roughly double of what Ottomans had at that time.
They were about equal in tech, what is unusual for a civ in isolated island.
Usually those civs are far behind. But their heavy investment in infrastructure after the 10th city rather then expansion must have helped on that.

About Roman wars: they unloaded a single horseman as seen above at 470 bc, and declared war turn after.
War lasted around 500 years, but nothing really happened, romans unloaded few units now and then either to the location shown above,
or then they sailed round the whole continent, and unloaded their units there, to exactly same height Maybe they were aiming at Sogut, my capital,
what was undefended, since it was safely far from borders.
They were not a very serious threat at any point. AI just cant threaten anyone overseas.
They dont know how to mass unload units from 10 galleys into mountains/hills etc.

I had no other Roman wars, and Rome had only one other war with Carthage, razing one Carth city on Roman continent, but thats about it.
I didnt need the Roman lands, and didnt have the resources to build big enough army, since efforts were in going to space quickly,
and my continent was big enough to give tech @ 4 turns in industrial and modern eras. But thats off topic already.

Few screens about events on the other continent.

Even tho Spain was equal in tech with me, and Egypt was way behind in tech and broke,
they managed to wipe Spain off the planet in only 330 years. Unusually good war performance for AI. (or very bad performance from Spain)

And here's the Culture and Power graphs.

As seen here, my game differs from many others by India being the weakest civ troughout almost the whole game.
That leads me to post yet another screenshot, about India, even tho bit off-topic (sorry).

India strangely had loads of unimproved tiles in their territory (roughly half),
even tho they had NOT been in any war for atleast in hunderds of years.
(screenshot taken in 1465 AD, final turn, unimproved terrain marked with red U, city radius drawn with blue)
If they had improved all their terrain, they would certainly been more powerful.

(BtW sorry about using the Skanky Burns resource mod as seen in screenshots, but as i can see they were not prohibited in this GotM yet as the announcement was given at 10th, and i had played the current GotM game almost to the end at that date.)

 

[pterrok]

Well, Rome certainly affected my game in a very unintended sense, probably...

When I saw the general layout of the world and the huge cultural lead AND tech parity that Rome kept, I simply decided to go for a Diplomatic win--whereas on a small map I may have normally tried for a Conquest or Domination.

There was one demand from Rome that I DID not give into that provoked my only war with them. I believe I got EVERYONE else in the world allied with me against them. I think it started right before I got Siphai and that Rome made one minor troop landing on my soil that was quickly eliminated.

I managed to take and hold a Roman city where Brundisium is in Renata's pic--I had a LOT of units in it to keep it from flipping and it held off a fair stream of attackers. I got Walls and then a Library for some culture, but I did not notice anything unusual when I built those...

I plopped one more city down North of Neapolis (on the hill on the river on the coast in Renata's pic) and then we made peace after it withstood a couple of assaults. I never really went and attacked Roman units.

Spain was the powerhouse--probably because I made her some gpt deals to get her techs. Then she would extend the favor back when I had the new tech in the other tree. Rome seemed to keep up with us both--so Spain was probably dealing with him on the side. I think I DID make one tech deal with Rome after our peace.

I think I lost two galleys trying to get to the 'new' world and then built only two galleys to get to Rome--and I was really up in the air as to whether to invade the Roman island or just sit tight.

So anyway, Rome just told me what type of game to play--I never really bothered to wonder how they had gotten to where they were--I just lived with it.

 

[ltccone]

Originally posted by cracker
Renata,

The Roman workers were not modded to slow them down. The Romans had 4 eqWorkers to start with.

What exactly are eqWorkers? I noticed several Roman Workers that died instead of being captured. I'm guessing that was them. What was so special about them?

 

[cracker]

The several workers that died were "worker1" workers.

There is really no difference in what "workers", "eqworkers", and "worker1" units do. These different unit names just let us control some of the equalization features between the different game versions.

As an example, the eqworkers appear in the Civ3v1.29 version to adjust the purchase/trading cost for early workers to be in the 110 to 130 gold per worker range just like for the "workers" in PTW.

The "worker1" was just an offshoot of the extra settler balancing used to keep Rome in the game without having Rome eat you alive.

 

[SirPleb]

The odd things about Rome had little effect on me due to the way my game played out. Nonetheless, I had an emotional reaction.

They puzzled me a bit. I didn't understand how they'd grown so quickly, why they weren't building wonders, and why they left land for the Celts and Carthage to settle. When I attacked them I found that they also had a surprising amount of infrastructure and military units. Their culture and research seemed unusual but didn't surprise me, I assumed these were just a side effect of Rome's fast growth and resulting power.

I never investigated their cities. I seldom investigate cities (other than what I learn when I establish an embassy of course.) I figure that the guesses I can make about a Civ are good enough that it isn't worth spending gold for more exact info. Perhaps that isn't the case if a Civ has been modded but I never considered that possibility. I guess I should have, there were enough odd things about Rome to clue me in, it just didn't occur to me.

I think that the largest impact Rome had on me, strategically and emotionally, is not on GOTM19, it is on future GOTMs. In future when I see something odd about a Civ I'm likely to think "I wonder what may have been changed about this Civ." That is a rather large impact, it will change the game that this thought will now start popping up when I see something odd.

 

[Moonsinger]

I honestly didn't notice anything so special about Rome. Sure Rome was big and strong, but they had their own island and there was no where else for them to go, so I didn't pay much attention to them. Toward their end, I had about 50 Sipahies and they didn't even have knights; so talking Rome was like taking candies from the baby; it was a very sad day for my Ottoman empire, but it had to be done.

 

[col]

I left Rome pretty much to their own devices for the whole game. I made an early mistake in expecting the Emperor civs on my continent to behave like Emperor civs. I carefull constructed a barrier to keep them out of the north then settle it at my leisure but found to my horror that the Celts were pretty much crippled from the start. I had just wasted a large chunk of my early time so I dont think my QSC will be a thing of beauty. I made up my mind fairly early to go for a dom win this game, then changed it to go for space then changed back again for the fun of it and because I couldnt spend any more time on the game so swept the board.

My game fell very naturally into distinct expansion phases. Horsemen and swords took care of the Celts. Sipahi took care of the Carthaginians and established a large foothold on the big continent. Tanks finished the game. I could see that I would need a large part of the main continent for a dom win so focussed on establing my bridgehead there and left Rome alone. They had a truly amazing number of ships at one point. It was hard to sail anywhere without hitting them!

A fun game but my dom will be centuries behind most and a millenium behind SirP!

 

[Sirp]

Originally posted by LKendter
I will have to watch more closely, but I am use to getting from the following formula: (Population - 1) / 2. This has held pretty well for me.

I actually thought it was floor(Population/2) - basically the same thing. I can certainly never remember razing a large city and getting nothing for it before...

-Sirp.

 

[Greebley]

I had never realized how much a civs different priorities could affect its growth. I suspect that I should learn what the civs emphasis are. It would improve my game.

It occurs to me that one could use resources to direct an AI civ's growth to either make it "historically accurate" or to make its placement more intelligent. Might be a useful technique.

Since a settler can change into 2 workers, can you make a worker1 turn into a single normal worker in a similar manner? That would allow one to avoid workers that just died.

I stated this elsewhere, but I think the changes to Rome was a good thing. I feel flexibility to handle the unexpected is part of what makes a good player. I personally liked what was done and would want to see this trend continued in future GOTM's.