WOTM 02: Final Spoiler

[Gyathaar]

WOTM 02 - Final Spoiler

Reading Requirements:

1. You must have completed and submitted your game.

Posting Restriction:

1. None.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Well, I gotta say I *loved* this map. Definitely an interesting challenge, and with a few twists. No strategic resources nearby in any convenient locations. Both the nearest civs actually settling their capitals on top of resources. And it was a real surprise when I watched the reply after finishing the game, to realize that Gyathaar had evidently pre-seeded the three islands with barb cities. I spent the last 30-ish years, while I was building my spaceship, allowing my military to amuse themselves by cleaning up the barb islands. All the time I assumed the cities had just grown there because no AIs had claimed it. I even wandered over the city ruins I found on the northernmost isle, assuming it was an ex-barb city that an AI had destroyed (turned out from the replay, it was the remnants of an attempt by Qin to settle the island, very swiftly dealt with by the barbs!). It does also explain the very large numbers of barb units (I've never before seen 12 (!) riflemen defending a pasture)

One interesting thing this game threw up for me is to wonder exactly how the barbs get their technology. I'd vaguely assumed any tech learned was shared across all barbs. However, when I invaded, I found that the barbs on the largest, southernmost, island (west of Russia, south of the main continent) had railroaded everywhere, while on the northernmost island (north of the main continent, between Russia and China), there were only roads, despite there being a couple of idle barb workers in their cities. That makes me think that the barbs on the two islands had different levels of tech advancement.

Anyway, onto my game. Left the 500AD spoiler with a few cities built and preparing to invade Toku. There was then basically series of wars lasting up to the 1800s. I carved through most of Toku fairly easily (was very surprised at how few units Toku had considering his warlike tendencies), then destroyed Qin (with more difficulty) and finally turned on India. India was a walkover due to almost no defensive units. I had wanted to stop the warring after Qin and turn to spaceship building, but as often seems to happen, India was totally rocketing away on techs and I was nervous of being beaten to the spacerace. I also got embroiled in a couple of wars with Catherine, since at various stages both Qin and Toku vassaled themselves to her while I was at war with them. On the first war, Cathy captured and razed my westernmost city that I'd taken off Toku. I actually regarded that as a favour since I realized after I'd taken it from Toku that it was in a non-ideal location, without much food, and I should've razed it. I later planted a new city on the neighbouring tile.

During the wars my economy was in a total mess - at one stage, I was around the grenadier point in techs, and getting +30gpt on 0% science! That gradually built up, but overall I think I did too much warring and that heavily delayed my spaceship building.

1900 was an interesting decision point. I was just about then on the point where I'd soon be able to start my first spaceship parts. My empire stretched from Cyrus's border in the East to the southermost tip of Cathy's empire in the South, where the land suddenly turns from South to East. My military was moderately sized, and split between my two borders. Cathy was furious with me (but friendly with the Mongols on her other border) so it was obvious an attack was going to come at some point. I'd just researched artillery. After some thought I decided to skip a couple of turns science so I could pay to upgrade all my cannon to artillery and invade her first. Artillery plus riflemen vs her army of mostly cavalry. I still don't know whether that was the right decision or not since it undoubtedly delayed my spaceship, but then again if she was going to invade me sooner or later… I also found a new military tactic that payed off quite well. Her first city was overflowing with cavalry and I had a lot of CR3 artillery. I attacked the city, and left it with one almost-dead cavalry defending it. On a sudden thought, I then left the city. Sure enough, the next turn, Cathy had stocked it up with lots more cavalry. Those cavalry would've severely dented my artillary if I'd met them in the field, but in a city with me having so many CR3 promotions… Of course I decimated them with no losses on my part, but again stopped just short of taking the city. When the next turn the only new defenders that appeared were a couple of riflemen, I figured I'd dented Cathy's forces enough and took the city. I then made my way northwards, had the war somewhat prolonged because after I captured 3 cities and was on the point of judging that I'd weakend Cathy sufficiently that she'd no longer threaten me and I could offer peace, she vassaled to the Mongols (backwards in tech but huge numbers of units). Eventually got out of the war after razing Moscow and fending off quite a few isolated Mongol attacks, and was well relieved to do so because by that time I was running 40% culture to keep war weariness in check.

After that it was just a cruise to spaceship building. As mentioned earlier, I had my military clean up the barb islands, since that gave me extra land but no war weariness. I'm not too unhappy with a 1971 spaceship. I know that's pretty slow in absolute terms, but I'm sure that's at least in part because of the challenging start location, combined with the raging barbs, and a couple of early mistakes.

 

[ElWanderer]

Entry class: Contender
Game status: Spaceship Victory for Korea
Game date: 1917 AD
Base score: 4433
Final score: 14150

I didn't get the diplomatic victory I was hoping for, as Qin decided to tear up our defensive pact and got in bed with Catherine

I realised (far too late) that this happened when I switched from bureaucracy, Qin's favorite civic. Had I been more awake, I could have switched back to see if that was enough to get the win.

Catherine, my rival at the UN was furious with me; she kept making sillier and sillier demands which I refused. She couldn't invade because me, Cyrus and Asoka had a little triangle of defensive pacts. Ghengis was also very angry, but he was also substantially behind in tech.

As I played longer into the night, I decided to go for the quick (real-life-time-wise) victory rather than churning out troops to dominate the continent and bring modern civilisation to the barbarians.

The only fly in the ointment was that my production-heavy cities were all south of the 30th parallel and couldn't build the space elevator. Switching to universal suffrage (via the UN ) and the great engineer from fusion helped, but for once I flew through the tech tree with the construction of parts lagging behind. Didn't help that Warlords seems to have added a dependency on satellites to build the elevator; makes sense... just wish I'd noticed before I tried to build it!

By 1917, my rivals had started building ships, but no one got any further than casings. My final score looks quite pathetic though.

I spent too long switching my focus. I could have kept the hammer down and gone for domination. Then I went for diplomacy and gave up the moment Qin changed sides. Then finally, I didn't know the "best" route through the tech tree for a spaceship victory has changed.

I really enjoyed most of the game; obviously having your second city razed isn't exactly "fun"! Once I got used to the level of barbarian-spawning, I really got into it. Once I was able to explore far from home, I couldn't believe how large the starting continent turned out to be. It was also funny seeing all the city ruins in the extremities of the map. It reminded me of playing terra maps

 

[ElWanderer]

I carved through most of Toku fairly easily (was very surprised at how few units Toku had considering his warlike tendencies)

Hrm, same here. Tokugawa declared war on me but never really mounted an offensive against me. I was shocked how he just sat back and let me take his cities one by one. Because of his aggressive settlement early on, I was very worried that our mutual border was too long to protect from raiders. But none appeared.

That said, it still took a while to chew through some of his units (yay for having two protective neighbours!). At first I was suiciding hwachas against his City Garrison 2/3 & Drill 1/2 (the barbs had helped train some of them) longbowmen and frequently failing to cause any damage. This only improved when I massed a load of trebuchets together and had some fortune with the random number generator.

Too many of his outlying cities were only defended by a pair of melee units though

 

[drkodos]

I really wanted to grab a diplo victory in this WotM, but just like in the real world, my diplomatic skills are nil.


I managed to get the UN built with nice boost from yet another Great Engineer. I had +10 w/Asoka, +11 w/Qin, +14 w Cyrus, +9 w/Khan, +2 w/Cathy, -1 w/Toku (Vassal--so I grab his votes).

So what happens? Same as every time I try for the diplo....

Qin gets voted in by a landslide.

Then changes all civics aways from what I need to keep myself fat & happy. He even leads the vote to change to Environmentalism! (That Rat bastid!)


He was dangerously close to grabbing the outright diplo victory. Only Asoka abstaining was keeping me in it. I did what I had to do. I had to attack. This, of course, catapulted another leader into 2nd place, Mr Khan, who then won next round of voting because all of Qin's cronies were upset with me and all modifiers went down into the +1 - +3 range.


All the while, I keep backdooring my tech lead and decide I need to start thinking about another victory type. It is late in the game. Infantry are appearing getting ready to appear, so I feel it is way too late to start a conquest campaign. My onyl real shot is to leverage this tech lead in science and go for the ole stand-by, Space Ship. No doubt, it felt like going home with the same person yet again after having such high expectations at the beginning of the pubbing, but just like in that pursuit, launching your ship still counts as a win.

1968, Korea fires its payload into the great beyond.

Spoiler :

[/img]

A telling shot of the final power graph. After building the UN in 1850's, I thought I had the win in the bag, so I shut down most research and only kept marginally building military. I built a big treasury for any bribes I might need to grab a few votes, or for any upgrades.

The endgame was rather exciting as other civs were also rapidly building their SS and I was invaded by Russia & Mongols with their Gunships, Artillery and Mechanical Inf vs my Tanks and Infantry. Having Toku as a Vassal/buffer was probably the difference as it came down to a turn or two before the invasion would have been able to cripple my industrial core and stop my SS production.



I was happy/lucky to get the win. A bad start, faulty strategy, losing both initial workers, only three cities at 500 AD, a butchered diplomacy, all made it a bit too frustrating at times.

But the map, the Protective trait theme, the lack of strategic resources, all helped in combination to give me fighting chances, so I kept going, enjoyin it all.



And still, I cannot get an honest diplo win. I have back-doored them in several fashion, but unable to play it straight and make it work.


Once again, art imitates life.

 

[godotnut]

@drkodos:

When I'm in that position, I just give away however many cities I need to to boost the population of a leader who is disliked. It's pretty easy to manipulate the vote that way and set up a foil for your diplo wins.

 

[andybrown65]

I managed to win this somehow despite a plethora of schoolboy errors and no idea what I was doing.

So after a early build of the wall I sat back with no military and built and researched. It was a lonely existence no-one would trade as I was too teched up (100% for most of the game) I had 6 cities and a spare maceman so I decided to try toko again, my one lone Maceman attacking him and keeping his worker at bay. Like others mentioned he had no real army. Years later I sent a few more troops in and gradually started to take his cities; Moscow allmost surving due to industructable city defenders. The march North began and when I thought I'd taken the last city he vassaled to me. He'd managed to run some settlers through Russia and next to Mongolia. No sooner had he Vassal's than Qin DWOM - oops Qin attacking in the South my army in the North. I lost one city then retook it; by then Catherine had DWOM and I split my army in two and lost all penetration into the ememy land. I razed a Russian city and got wiped out, I also pulled out of China and sued for peace. Diplo seemed the way to win - but the game pace was sooo slow. Even the barb Islands took forever. I had Cyrus on a Defensive pact and Cathy hated me. Diplo was out I couldn't swing enough. So I started the Space race and allmost got an earlyish 1900 win - it's just I forgot about 1 part and hadn't even researched it. So on what I thought was my winning turn, Cathy DWOM bringing Cyrus in and cancelling our pact. Bring troops back from the barb island I absorbed her attack and Cyrus kept raising her cities, she vassaled to me and I accepted, then Qin attacked 10 turns off my last spacepart and beelined for my production city. Rushed troops back and changed production. half way in - Cyrus my buddy of the entire game backstabs and DWOM. I'm stealth bombered up - techs ahead but loose a few border cities - I'm just turning the tide when I launch to the stars.

 

[Murky]

I got a diplomatic win in 1844 AD for 25k.

 

[Vynd]

Picking up where my post in the first spoiler thread left off... In 500 AD all of the major pieces were in place for me to pursue a cultural victory. I had three well-sited cities (Seoul, Wonsan, and Sakae), two secondary cities, four religions founded, and a heavy concentration of Wonders in Seoul. On the negative side, my pace was slower than I’d have liked. The territory around my cities wasn’t all that well developed. And my construction of religious buildings hadn’t progressed very far. I also had a very small military.

The basic pattern I followed for much of the rest of the game was to have Wonsan and Sakae concentrate almost exclusively on cultural buildings so they could catch up with Seoul’s Wonder-powered cultural advantage. Seoul built some cultural stuff as well, but also helped the rest of my cities with my other needs: a respectable military, more Settlers and Workers, and the spreading of different religions throughout my empire.

I was first to Philosophy in 545AD, Music in 710AD, and Liberalism in 1274AD. That netted me my fifth founded religion, a free Great Artist, and a free tech. I could have established Islam as well if I’d wanted, but I thought five religions was more than enough.

My research was vastly superior to the AIs. So much so that I considered holding off on Liberalism so I could try and get Democracy from it for free. I really would have liked to run Universal Suffrage for the extra production. But I decided that would take too long to really benefit me. So I took Nationalism as my free tech in 1274AD, revolted to Free Speech, and ran 100% culture for more or less the rest of the game. My technological lead was so great at this point that I was still able to tech trade with the AIs for valuable techs like Gunpowder and Chemistry as late as 1694. At the end of the game there were still a few techs I had that the most backwards AIs lacked. That’s Prince level for you, I guess.

But I’ve gotten ahead of myself. A Great Prophet in 680 AD let me build the Kong Miao in Wonsan. That’s also the year I adopted Hereditary Rule. Genghis Khan became the last civ to contact me in 695 AD. At this point most of the world, and both of my immediate neighbors, had converted to Hinduism. I decided to convert in 710 AD, sacrificing culture from my non-state religions in exchange for better relations and the ability to use Organized Religion to speed up building construction. I made a classic dumb mistake here, however. After the revolt to establish Hinduism as my state religion was over, I forgot I wasn’t already in Organized Religion. I didn’t switch to that for another 20 turns.

I needed another 4 cities to reach 9, the amount I’d need to get as many Cathedrals as I wanted. I built three more. One near deer and iron in the south, one near the Silver not far from Seoul, and the last on the northeast coast with Bananas and Sugar. I culture flipped the Japanese city of Goth, with Marble and some food resources, for my ninth city in 1538AD. I flipped another city or two at various points but didn’t keep them.

While all this was going on, I was steadily spreading religions around and building temples. Plus a few more wonders. Seoul built the Sistine Chapel in 1025 and the Taj Mahal in 1394. I started my first Cathedral-type building in 1358, in Sakae. That was also about the time I started building the Hermitage in Wonsan. Those two cities were the priority locations for Cathedrals, Seoul only built the ones that the others already had. I had to rely on culture buildings because I was only able to generate three Great Artists, including the one from Music. All of them were settled as Super Specialists in Sakae. I used some Great Prophets to build all of the Shrines I had available, and a Great Engineer rushed out the Spiral Minaret in 1544AD.

By 1712 most of my major building projects were completed, and almost everyone in the world was running Free Religion. So I converted to that too so I could get culture from all my religions again. By now Qin no longer liked me much. My culture was overwhelming his border cities, we didn’t share a religion anymore, and I had refused to convert to Bureaucracy. In 1762 he declared war. He had Cavalry and Riflemen to my Grenadiers, but he didn’t send any really big stacks so I held him off without much difficulty, although the war did drag on until the end of the game.

My three culture cities reached Legendary status satisfyingly close together, considering their very different histories and the fact that I didn’t save an GAs to pop at the end. Wonsan was the first to make it, in 1806. Seoul followed five turns later, in 1811. And Sakae was five turns after that, in 1816. My final score was: 1958/14056. I feel like this should have gone much better, given how dominant I was in the middle stages of the game. But there just wasn’t much I could do to speed up my city improvements. It was getting all those missionaries, temples, and cathedrals built that really took a long time. I guess I either needed to make an earlier start on that, or else I should have taken my technological superiority and used it to win via other methods. I also think that building the Great Wall first and foremost probably wasn’t the best move in the long run.

 

[drkodos]

@drkodos:

When I'm in that position, I just give away however many cities I need to to boost the population of a leader who is disliked. It's pretty easy to manipulate the vote that way and set up a foil for your diplo wins.

Sweet. Thanks. I will certainly try to put that advice to use next time I aim for the diplo.

It's almost straight out of the Karl Rove playbook (no offense intended!) to game the machine and get the opponet we want, but hey, that politics. Brilliant!

 

[godotnut]

Sweet. Thanks. I will certainly try to put that advice to use next time I aim for the diplo.

It's almost straight out of the Karl Rove playbook (no offense intended!) to game the machine and get the opponet we want, but hey, that politics. Brilliant!

Are you suggesting that I am a small, doughy man with no ethics and an inflated track record based on exploiting other peoples' prejudices and insecurities?

With the election approaching, political references are abounding. I noticed a Jim Talent reference in the Warlords patch thread. It's cool that this community can make a reference to a fairly obscure senatorial candidate, and people get it. Civfanatics rule.

</off-topic>

 

[mushroomshirt]

Well, my first stab at a cultural victory did not go so well. Multiple PC problems forced me to abandon my game in the mid 1750s. Somehow I forgot to update my ini file to auto save every turn - things were not going so hot anyway.

The sneak attack by the Chinese really crippled me. This happened in about 1200 or so and I was forced into slavery and nationalism to beat them off. Still they managed to take 4 of my northern cities (luckily none of my cultural cities) before I managed to get peace out of them.

Being a warmonger, it's amazing how I managed to neglect my military. It was good enough for mopping up the technologically backwards Japan, but not even close to a match for the modern Chinese army!

City placement was a problem for me, too. Pyongyang I founded on the grassland west of the river and I really should have founded on the wine one square to the west to bring the pigs in. I also really poorly managed my religious buildings and was late with the cathedral builds. Poor cottaging of my cultural cities meant the cultural slider didn't do me as much good as it should have and my GP city was my wonder city (capital) and it was polluted with nasty prophet generating wonders so I got few great artists.

Anyway a big learning experience for me and I plan on trying again on GOTM12. Wish me luck! I can't do worse...

 

[Vynd]

I also really poorly managed my religious buildings and was late with the cathedral builds. Poor cottaging of my cultural cities meant the cultural slider didn't do me as much good as it should have and my GP city was my wonder city (capital) and it was polluted with nasty prophet generating wonders so I got few great artists.

I had similar problems in my own cultural game. In hindsight I don't think the map and settings were particularly favorable for a cultural victory. There weren't many city sites in the immediate area that were suitable for heavy-duty cottaging, nor were there any really good locations for GP generation.

 

[PaganPaulWhisky]

This was definitely the bloodiest prince game I've ever played. After getting fuedalism and construction and meeting 3 rivals, I decided to go all out war this game since the captial was great for production. Japan declared war on me just after 500 AD but really did nothing at all. I fought a pillage war with longbows since I wasn't ready to take on his protective troops yet. After ruining over half on his tiles, I had built up a sizable army and declared on Quinn who was building wonders like crazy and had tech lead.

I vassalized Quinn after capturing about 5 cities including his capital using longbows and hwachas (followed by a few maces). Declared on India the next turn (who was tech whoring as usual). He offered capitulation after I took one city, so I accepted. Asoka became an extremely useful vassal and basically funded my war efforts for the rest of the game. He was giving upwards of 30 gpt for each of 5 different resources at the end of the game.

Went into brief peace period to get grenadiers, then declared on Cyrus. Captured all of his cities except one, and accepted capitulation. Cannons were brought in for support towards the middle of the war. Followed up with Japan who was way behind in tech. Toku offered capitualtion very quickly.

Here is where I ran into trouble. I declared on Catherine who was number 1 on the power graph. Unfortunatley she had a pact with genghis who was almost as high. I severely underestimated the amount of troops these nations had (I have never seen the AI build so many troops on this difficulty level). I marched in with large stacks of cannons and infantry and was mowed down by endless waves of cavalry from both civs. Fortunately I had left Japan 4 or 5 large cities as a buffer. I changed strategy and camped my units in toku's cities and let them attack my vassal. I was able to hold out and put a decent dent into Cathy's forces until I was able to make peace with Genghis. Moved in full force on Cathy and razed cities until she capitulated. I took a bunch of casualties in the process.

I used the same strategy against Genghis until he was weak enough to invade (he also had infantry by this point so he was tough to crack). I finally overpowered him and achieved a very late conquest in 1947. It probably would have been much easier to go spacerace, but not nearly as fun. By game end I had killed over 650 troops and racked up 6 great generals (all but two were settled in the capital). I lost over 150 units. The slow start and long snaky landmass really dragged the game out, but made for some interesting war strategy. I basically ran vassalage, theocracy, state property, and police state for the entire endgame and was well behind in tech for most of the game.

 

[RobertTheBruce]

1508AD Domination

Congratulations to the designers for a really fun game. The combination of no early military resources near the capital and huge waves of barbs made it a very fun game. I decided to add an additional no whipping challenge to the game. I think I've been whipping my cities too much and thought this would be a good game to try not whipping my cities senseless in the early game. Its not the best choice for a raging barbs game but I enjoyed the scares.

Early strategy: Fog bust and find military resources. I settle in place to exploit the huge commerce from the furs. The location isn't great for the late game but I'm planning a military victory so hopefully the low population and lack of cottages won't hurt that much.

Worker, warrior, warrion, warrior, settler initial builds. i explore the local area, kill a few wolves and find the gem, pig, marble site where I found Pyongyang in 2380BC. Its far away but a great city location. I'm not that excited about the great vineyard for a second city because it just won't be able to grow.

Early techs:
Hunting
Animal Husbandry
Wheel
Bronze Working (find copper west of Pyongyang), Agriculture
Writing
Pottery
IW (start chopping jungles)
Meditation, Priesthood, CoL, Civil Service from Oracle in 400BC

Yes, I totally forgot that we have a Protective Leader. The first archery unit I built was a crossbow and I was confused by the extra promotions for a couple of minutes. I founded my third city (Wonson 1900BC) beside the copper,cow, banana to start producing axes. There were some scary moments while I started to produce axes. Slavery makes a big difference with unit placement. Three times a barb axe appeared near Wonson or Pyongyang and I couldn't get an axe back in time to protect the warrior garrison. Luckily, each time the axe pillaged either my gem mine or cow pasture and I could get a shock axe back into the city to defend. Without slavery, I had to think a lot more about unit placement. Those protective archers would have really helped in those moments but that's my own fault.

My expansion continued by taking two barb cities. Thracian is west of the capital, on a hill near the pig, wheat and incence. This is a great barb stopper. All the barbs from the southern tundra that have been pummelling me in waves suddenly start crashing into a couple of shock axes garrisoned in a hill city. The barbs from the swamps in the north are harder to contain. I take a second barbs city near the horses and suddenly see there are two barb axes sitting on the tile north of the city. They slaughter my wounded attacker and raze the city. I build another city, Pusan 115BC, for the elephants, horses, and sugar.
Elephants and Hwacha are a great combination and I'm planning to use them to attack Japan and China. I build Stonehenge and the Oracle in Seoul for a great prophet to build the shrine and the Great Library as well.

I start the attack on Japan when I get Construction. I should have waited for a few Hwacha before attacking with axes. I take, lose, and then retake Nara since Tokugawa has some highly promoted axes which easily cut up my wounded city raider axes. Again, no whipping takes a bit more strategic planning. Nara is in the crook of two mountain ranges with corn, iron and marble. I farm and mine everything and make it my Heroic Epic city.

The rest of the game is war of two fronts with maces, knights, hwacha, and trebuchets. Qin upgrades his archers to longbows the turn I declare war and elephants and hwacha just don't cut it against city garrison 3, drill 2 longbows on hills. The war with Qin is really bloody and he has a lot of highly promoted longbows fortified in hilltop cities. Cathy, Asoka, and Cyrus are a piece of cake after Qin. All the Japanese cities, lead by the Heroic Epic, production city send units west, my original cities send units east. I eventually get Cathy and Qin to capitulate, eliminate Asoka and Genghis, and reduce Cyrus to one city. My economy is limited because I can't whip courthouses so I don't research very far. Cyrus hasn't researched Civil Service in 1500AD and Genghis is hopeless so it doesn't matter. I spam cities in the gaps and turn up the culture slider to finish a domination. I forgot to build the Hanging Gardens in the end game so my score isn't that great.

Curious bits:
Buddhism was founded incredibly late. Asoka founded Hinduism in 3370BC and Judaism in 2530BC. Cathy founded Buddhism in 1420BC, I almost founded it during my late CS slingshot (missed by 2 turns) and was shocked. Founding religions didn't help. Asoka had his second city razed by barbs immediately after it was built and never was a significant player. I've never seen Buddhism founded that late.

Asoka vassalized himself to Cyrus shortly before I attacked. I've never seen a AI volunteer for vassalage unless they had been reduced to a couple of cities.

I actually get a prophet to match my religion. I found Confucianism in 520BC and popped Mencius in 65AD. He builds the Kong Miao in 125AD.

The barbs schooled the AI. I think Cyrus had early horses because he took a bunch of barb cities while all the other AIs lost at least one. Asoka lost his second city and never really contended after that. Qin, Tokugawa, and Cathy lost their third or forth cities.

Genghis spent the entire game fighting barbs. The replay is incredible. He founded 5 cities and two of them were razed and replaced with barb cities. He razed the barb cities and build two more. The barbs counter and raze his cities again. He lost 9 cities to the barbs. When I arrived in 1400AD, he didn't have any metal hooked up and was fighting waves of barb swords and horse archers with keshiks. I provided a slight break for him by taking his northernmost city. He finally researches feudalism but his lands are heavily pillaged and I see no evidence that he ever had metals hooked up.

I never built boats so I didn't find the barb islands to the south and need most of the main continent for domination. The seeded barb cities were a neat idea.

That was a great map!

 

[kojimanard]

As of 500 AD, I was behind the Great Wall, with a substantial tech lead, and needing horses. I saw that that Tokugawa had them, and in 965 I DOW on him with maceman and Hwacha. He capitulated in 1154. I had cavalry in 1418 and went after the eastern neighbors. The Chinese were the toughest, and they gave up in 1601 and by 1732 the others to east were history.

As I moved my cavalry back to attack the Russians, I tried to milk (as much as I know how to). I had Bio and worked the farms to get grow the population. It did seem to help; my “win this turn” score moved from low 40k to 50K. The bottom line:
Game date: 1798 AD
Base score: 4988
Final score: 50213

 

[mushroomshirt]

I had similar problems in my own cultural game. In hindsight I don't think the map and settings were particularly favorable for a cultural victory. There weren't many city sites in the immediate area that were suitable for heavy-duty cottaging, nor were there any really good locations for GP generation.

It's nice to know I'm not alone! I am a novice at this cultural stuff and need all the company I can get. I will be trying for another cultural win in GOTM12, hopefully with more success after all my hard-earned lessons.

 

[Gnejs]

I did it! I won a conquest game despite having on only a single city throughout the entire game!!!

The end map is very desolate, only Seoul left in the entire world (not counting scores of barbarian cities...) Score is not very impressive either, but this was without doubt the most enjoyable civ game I have ever played!

Looong spoilers to follow once I have had the time to write them up.

Entry class: Contender
Game status: Conquest Victory for Korea
Game date: 2021 AD
Base score: 1579
Final score: 2246

Thanks to the GOTM staff for a truly great map. Awesome.


Edit: Here's a screenshot just before the final russian city is razed. Check the minimap!

 

[Murky]

I did it! I won a conquest game despite having on only a single city throughout the entire game!!!

The end map is very desolate, only Seoul left in the entire world (not counting scores of barbarian cities...) Score is not very impressive either, but this was without doubt the most enjoyable civ game I have ever played!

Looong spoilers to follow once I have had the time to write them up.

Entry class: Contender
Game status: Conquest Victory for Korea
Game date: 2021 AD
Base score: 1579
Final score: 2246

Thanks to the GOTM staff for a truly great map. Awesome.

Wow! How did do you manage to do this?

 

[drkodos]

I did it! I won a conquest game despite having on only a single city throughout the entire game!!!

Dotally Dawsome!

Can't wait to see this so I can feel even more inferior..... hehe.