WOTM 05 - Final Spoiler

RobertTheBruce · Feb 9, 2007

Hey mushroomshirt, you beat me by a turn! 1040AD conquest.

I tried an impi rush. I hooked up the copper, built a barracks and spammed a bunch of impis. India was eliminated in about 2300BC and they were nice enough to build a worker the turn before I attacked. I then sent my stack of impis toward Persia who I met second (I didn't met Wang Kong for a long time for some reason). I took a secondary city and attacked the capital with 8 impis vs 3 archers behind a wall. I just lost with 2 badly injured impis facing one last badly damaged archer which was promoted IBT and a second archer produced.

Time for a new plan. I was going to use captured workers to hook up copper or iron in captured cities and spam more impis and chariots but neither Persia or India have copper, iron, or horses and with 3 really scattered cities my research was slow. Does toroidal wrapping change the distance maintenance calculation? [It also is incredibly confusing. I often set forces on four turn moves and had no idea where they were coming from or going when they arrived. The weird wrapping and total lack of logic to the land made it a logistical nightmare.]

I built the Great Wall, Stonehenge, and Oracle in the capital while hooking up my cities. Eventually researched construction to continue attacking and then maces. (Metal Casting from the Oracle and Machinery from a G. Eng.) I never built a settler and just took AI cities.

Not expanding and crippling two civs early opened up a huge space for barbs. I couldn't pillage with impis because the barbs destroyed literally every improvement. WK got a few shock axes out and was holding his own but thats no match for maces. The other civs were huddled behind walls with no improvements. I had more trouble fighting through the barbarian axes and swords than taking the AI cities. Prince level AI and no military resources spells death against raging barbs.

Erkon · Feb 9, 2007

Continuation from first spoiler

I emulated One City Challenge and my target was a diplomatic victory.

I'll keep this short: I wiped out Isabella (1705) and Huayna Capac (1812 AD). During this time I maintained excellent relations with Wang Kon and Asoka, while ensuring that they didn't like Saladin. Everything went smooth, Saladin was leading in population, I just needed to wipe out Cyrus. His cities fell one by one, and then disaster struck in 1840 AD: Cyrus vassals to Wang Kon [pissed]

. UN is completed in 1874 AD, but the game is lost :cry:

. Saladin is my opponent, both WK and Asoka votes for me, and that would have been enough to win if Cyrus' votes didn't interfere. But they do, so I start a war with Saladin, reducing his population. But then the Koreans become my opponent. So I give up with the satisfaction of the knowledge that I would have won if it was Vanilla. I will spare the audience of my view of the vassal mechanism in Warlord. Instead I hope that someone can learn from my mistakes (always consider that the AI you attack may vassal to your ally).

The Mad Swede · Feb 10, 2007

Continued from my first spoiler. When I left you I was in a good position with 7 cities, of which 2 had been captured from Korea, a big lead in both science and score and a intent to take out Spain and Koreas final city.
The plan was to then go for a diplo win. I did also have a distinct lack of Great Prophets and Scientists.

The war with Spain started in 800AD after I had just upgraded to Macemen. The war was a walk in the park. I kept Madrid and Seville and razed the other 3 cities. Spain was out of the game by 1060AD.

I immediately turned around to finish Koreas last city. Turned out it was in fact 3 cities but I had enough troops to finish them off quickly anyway. Korea dead by 1220AD.

Now it was a matter of keeping everyone happy with me while i beelined for Mass Media. Huayna begged me to help him kill some Indians but I wasn't interested since I was now running Pacifism and had a really small army. I had even disbanded all my cats.

I managed to make an interesting "mistake" where I sent two Great Merchants to the same city at the same time. I thought I had only one and wondered why he didn't obey my orders the first time.

Saladin stole Versailles from me and was starting to grow strong. He was clearly going to be my rival. The mistake I did here was trying to befriend Asoka and Huayna at the same time which didn't really work since they hated each others guts.

Cyrus became my vassal in 1575AD. This was also a mistake. This was my first ever Warlords game and I did not know, nor notice, that this gave a negative standing to the other civs.

I finished the UN in 1720AD. The first vote was not even close since both Huayna and Asoka abstained. What to do? I gave up and went for spaceship instead. I used the UN for the other resolutions instead.

One cool thing happened in 1785AD when I used Gustave Eiffel to rush the Eiffel tower! How appropriate... :crazyeye:

Finally I suddenly realised that vassalisation gave a negative modifier diplomatically and by coincidence Cyrus renounced me the next turn. I tried a vote again. Huayna now voted for me! This gave me 468 votes. I needed 470. AAAARGH! :mad:

So I started growing my cities in anticipation for the next vote. This time Huayna does NOT vote for me. Insane.

The next desperate move was to declare war on India to swing Huayna back. I hardly had any troops but neither did Asoka. I manage to take one city with my few tanks and the next vote gives me a clear victory! Voila!

This was a fun game and I think I played it pretty well except for the diplomacy towards the end. Had I been any good at that side of the game I could have wrapped it up in the early 1700's.

Final score: 3894/33734
Finish date: 1832AD

mushroomshirt · Feb 10, 2007

RobertTheBruce said:
Hey mushroomshirt, you beat me by a turn! 1040AD conquest.

Hey RobertTheBruce! I know I am in good compamy if you and I finished at almost exactly the same time.

Lexad · Feb 10, 2007

Contender, conquest, 175BC, nothing but Wall, ikhandas and impi, terrible logistics, hate toroidal, sure someone wil beat this - Grey Cardinal offered me a speed challenge, for instance.

Airny · Feb 10, 2007

Lexad said:
Contender, conquest, 175BC, nothing but Wall, ikhandas and impi, terrible logistics, hate toroidal, sure someone wil beat this - Grey Cardinal offered me a speed challenge, for instance.

Congratulations! :blush:

I cant believe that! :blush:

Is there a trick to get the enemies units out of town (heard workers can do it) or build nukes early ^^?
You mean the Great Wall, right?
I'd appreciate a description of your strategy, cant take so long, if you finish so fast!

mushroomshirt · Feb 10, 2007

Lexad said:
Contender, conquest, 175BC, nothing but Wall, ikhandas and impi, terrible logistics, hate toroidal, sure someone wil beat this - Grey Cardinal offered me a speed challenge, for instance.

Wow - I figured someone would do it before 500AD, but not in BC! What a terrific time!

Lexad · Feb 10, 2007

The trick is in overwhelming impi numbers

And AI is still moron - not that happy with "improved" AI in patch - it was actually irrigating gems while it had BW already.
Research - Mining - BW - AH - Myst - Masonry - IW - Maths (for better chopping)
Early BO - Ikhanda until it's time for worker - while growing to get him faster - finish Ikhanda - impi. In between somewhere - Wall. Each city - Ikhanda - Monument - Impi. Workers build roads between rivers to connect cities to copper. Helping with chopping.
Hoped to get Iron or Horses to kill nearer enemies with more reliable swords or reinforce attack with HA - no resources, wasted bulbs. Finished 1 turn short from Pyramids.
Never built a settler and only 2 workers.

BSmith1068 · Feb 10, 2007

Contender, Conquest 1670 AD
Base score: 3312
Final score: 51978

Not too bad seeing how I am normally a builder type. I have also had a lot of RL conflict, so it was good to actually finish one of the GOTMs. I usually start all of them, but either get discouraged (aka re-start) or never have the time to finish.

I liked the lower difficulty level for this one. I am sure that it contributed to me being able to finish and submit.

bldrnnr · Feb 11, 2007

Entry class: Contender
Game status: Cultural Victory for Zulu
Game date: 1986 AD
Base score: 3456
Final score: 7863

This is my first victory in a game of the month, so while not very impressive, I'll take it.

Early game I settled in place and built a number of the early wonders (SH, GW, Pyramids). Founded a second city by the lake with the gems, and third further north, walling off Korea. Kept Saladin and Wang Kon friendly throughout the game, and Izzy wasn't much of a problem because she tried to tackle Wang Kon, and he shut her down.

I went a bit crazy with the wonder lust, and my military was weak because of it. Asoka declared war on me, and we went back and forth for a very long time. I lost and then recaptured 2 of my own border cities, and then started going through his. I was a few turns from capturing the one city with horses, when he vassalizes to Saladin. Aaarghhh! Considering Saladin had a stack of 20+ units near my border, I figured I'd lick my wounds and build up my cities instead.

Mid game I had a decent size empire, but was slightly behind in tech because of the long war. Saladin and Wang Kon had visible standing armys I didn't want to mess with. Being behind in tech, not very knowledgable on diplomacy, and not having the means to inflict a domination or conquest victory, I started working towards a cultural victory. I had been using the culture to wall off Korea up to this point, so my first three cities became my focus. The capitol hit legendary early, and I worked the other two up from there. At the end of the game, I think Saladin had 5 spaceship parts completed, but was several techs away from finishing his.

AgedOne · Feb 11, 2007

I must confess my true shame: Shaka lost this one to Inca in 2050.

I have submitted, and carried on to the bitter end through a sense of duty despite knowing there was no way back from the situation I had reached by somewhere around 1500AD.

I was sitting in a good position at 500AD - top of the scores, building up my armies ready to assault Wang and probably Saladin. I guess I just wasn't advanced enough or strong enough, because my attack on Wang kind of petered out to a stalemate. His Hwachas countered my catapults. We just never did enough damage.
Then we turned our attentions to Saladin, who was much less advanced. Only Wang attacked us from the north just as we were going into action on Saladin in the south.
Peace with Saladin and fight Wang to a standstill again.
Then Saladin attacks us from the south.
The middle period of the game had us looking like the Grand Old Duke of York's men - forever running up and then back again. Never got anything useful done.

Finally, we stopped this nonsense and tried to research our way back into a good position, but now we were behind and playing catch-up. When we had riflemen enough to attack with, we found everyone else had them too.

The same thing with infantry a bit later.

Into the modern era we were still crashing back and forth trying to damage our neighbours, or defending ourselves from attacks from the likes of Asoka.

Then we noticed Cyrus had completed his Apollo program, so we headed for Mass Media in the attempt to get a desperate UN win by the back door. We did have friends. By this stage Saladin was friendly - all the transgressions of the early years forgotten. Cyrus was pleased. Huayna too.

But then Huayna got his Apollo too and, when we had just signed a defence pact with Saladin, he triggered World War! Huayna declared on Saladin, dragging in his vassals Asoka and Wang, while Saladin's vassal Isabella came in on the side with ourselves, of course, as protection buddies.

Mayhem, as Huayna had tanks and gunships against our infantry.

We survived, but also failed to get Mass Media in time. Cyrus completed the UN, shutting the door on our final hope.

The final years were spent watching various nations complete their spaceship parts, and Cyrus failing to get the requisite votes at the UN. None of it came to anything. The year 2050 came around and Huayna was sitting in first place. Shaka was (gulp) forth.

Disgrace.
Now off to play deity in GOTM15 ! :lol:

orb · Feb 12, 2007

Spaceship loss to Korea in 1984. (contender)

Made some really stupid mistakes.

1) - Forgot Barb level and sent out my second settler without an escort.
2) - Failed to expand after that. (Only 2 Zulu cities)
3) Decided to use military might against the No.1 nation (Korea) - Not completely bad, except my axemen/cat stack arrived just in time to see the protectionist archers upgrade to longbows.
4) Beat a quick retreat and decided to attack India instead. - It was going well, until India Vassalised to Korea. - Ahhh. (This is my third Warlords game in a row where this has happened to me.)

Got minced between Korea and India. - Decided to play to the end just to see what happened next.

Curses. - Still trying to get my first conquest win in a WOTM game.

Half Nelson · Feb 13, 2007

This was my first ever Warlords game and I performed very poorly:- my worst GOTM score ever by some margin (SS victory in 2001 for around 13k points as I remember). Good start but, when it was clear iron was absent, I became somewhat obsessed with taking out my Western neighbour Arabia (who had Great Wall and Pyramids) before camel archers were let loose. I captured the Wonder cities without too much difficulty but stopped short of eradicating Arabia from the map, turning my forces elsewhere in my usual approach of chipping away at bording civs to expand from the centre. This had unanticipated "Warlords" consequences here in that India, Arabia and Spain all ended up as vassals to Korea (which I had foolishly trusted as a trading partner). I spent the last 500-odd years of the game in almost constant war with various combinations of Korea plus vassal states. I held them off fairly easily (the new AI may be clever diplomatically but still can't fight a war) but it deflected me from tech progress and stopped me in my tracks as far as expansion / domination was concerned.

My major mistakes were (1) missing out on Oracle (set up nicely for CS slingshot) by changing religion and going into anarchy at precisely the wrong turn, (2) not killing off the weaker civs (no-one offered to capitulate) who vassaled themselves to Korea, (3) deciding against early conquest because of the number of land tiles and lack of iron and (4) not reading about vassal states until midway through the game. Always read the Instructions ! I also built the Ironworks on a map without coal or iron (clearly not on form this month !). Building without these resources and moving without railroads was painfully slow and I can't say I much enjoyed that aspect of the game experience, although it was certainly a challenge (one I mucked up). Still, I like Great Generals (I generated 8 with all the fighting) and it was interesting to fight a modern war again (Korea used fighters to pillage with great effect). The Great Wall was also very useful once I got hold of it (no threat from Barbarians by then but handy when being attacked from all sides).

Half Nelson · Feb 13, 2007

On further reflection, the lack of ivory (no War Elephants) and gold also had major effects, not least on happiness in big cities (1 gold is as good as 50 gems for happy faces).

Gnejs · Feb 13, 2007

Continuing from my first spoiler found here.

As of 500 AD I was or had been at war with everyone but the Incans. Basically, I just kept warring and razing cities. Once I got paper I could extort some world maps to find where the final AI cities were hidden.

My initial army swept through Korea, then India, Persia and finally attacked the Incans from the west. A second, smaller army fought the spanish and the hit the incans from the east. The third army razed Arabia and then converged with the second to mop up the Incans. Finally, I had some Grenadiers seek out a couple of stray Arabian and Persian cities.

Korea was eliminated in 740 AD, India in 1050 AD, Spain 1130 AD, Arabia 1310 AD, Incans 1350 AD, and finally the Persians in 1370 AD.

All in all, a very satisfying win. I had a really huge tech advantage in the end. The Incans, who were the second most advanced, still didn't have Alphabet when I conquered them! As they lacked metals there were even some Quechuas defending against my Grenadiers!!! :eek:

It was very tempting with all those wonders that could be built in just a few turns. Check the screenshot, I could have built 6 great wonders in 33 turns...

Research past 500 AD:

Spoiler :

Production past 500 AD in Ulundi:

Spoiler :

Great people:

Spoiler :

It was a nice game, quite different from my previous OCC in WOTM2. This time I only had to raze 38 cities...

Base score: 913
Final score: 13113

DynamicSpirit · Feb 13, 2007

In the pre-game WOTM06 discussion, Conquistador63 drew attention to Sirian's guide to map scripts (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/reference/map_scripts_guide.php), and reading it, I realized that fantasy realm with crazy resources always makes 4 randomly selected resources very common, while completely removing 8.

So on rechecking the map, the 4 common ones were obviously gems, stone, aluminium, banana.

The 8 missing ones... Well scanning a map to see what's not there is a bit harder than scanning to see what is there, but I think they would've been: gold, iron, coal, ivory, wheat, corn, silk. And one more, which I'm guessing was either fish or clam, with the other one happening not to appear by chance coz there was so little water. That basically meant that we were immediately down on +3 happy, +4 health, and no elephants, swordsmen, cannon or railroads (Except, oddly, in the cities. Evidently a peculiarity of Civ is you only need coal for those railroads that are outside the cities!)

(EDIT: I think I now also understand why this spoiler lacked the usual ban on posting screenshots showing modern resources: We wouldn't have been able to post any screenshots!

)

julienheadley · Feb 13, 2007

wow, it's finally done. this is the first warlords game i've completed and won. it took me 83 hours. i think i did pretty well though.

space race, 1842
base score: 6719
normalized: 60717

i started off settler first and sent my scout off to explore. when the settler was ready, i brought the scout back to escort. after the settler i built a worker, and then an ikhanda. umgungundlovu i built an ikhanda.

risky stuff but it worked. tech i went mining > bronze > masonry > an hus > writing > alphabet. when i got bronze working i started building axemen. i didn't build the wall. that was a lot of barbarians.

when i got alphabet i was able to trade writing for agriculture fishing the wheel mysticism pottery and archery. later i traded alphabet for iron working and sailing. after a couple impi and 4--5 axemen i went hard for settlers. my sixth city i spent four hours thinking about where to put it. i am not kidding! i eventually put it next to cyrus, to get the horses. it turns out it was a good move.

i researched metal casting and was able to trade it for mathematics and currency. i also traded iron working and other stuff for the religious techs. then i founded confuciansim. by this time i was the clear leader in science. i researched civil service, then founded daoism, then nationalism, constitution, and the democracy slingshot. it was at this point that my plan became clear.

i built angkor wat to make my priests good while i was generating prophets. then i realized they were better than engineers, and i could make a lot of them. representation would make them even better. the statue of liberty and mercantilism would make even more of them, and with all the religious buildings, the university of sankore would speed my science.

it was beautiful. i built the taj mahal to speed up the democracy slingshot, and right before i finished it, i switched to representation, organized religion, and confucianism. i didn't want to convert earlier because i didn't want to piss people off.

the holy city of confucianism was umgungundlovu. it also had the great library, the national epic, the university of sankore, and oxford. it made a lot of great people.

ulundi had stonehenge, angkor wat, the taj mahal, and the statue of liberty. i eventually built the three gorges dam there. i built broadway in umgungundlovu. anyway, lots of great people.

after democracy i got cavalry. as soon as i finished wang kon attacked me. two giant stacks of macemen and hwacha. there were at least 25 macemen, and 10--15 hwacha. he took the holy city of daoism, which was on the stone plains hill next to the lake, but i got it back with some axeman upgrades and cavalry hurries. it changed hands a number of times. when i finally kept it it was size 1, with only the holy building remaining! but i lost no culture.

he also took a city i had in the south. i took that back and quickly crushed him. i left him with two cities, one on either side of isabella. at this point the war machine was rolling. i simultaneously attacked asoka and saladin. i made so much money from war that i was able to keep science at 100% the whole time. at this point i decided to go space race.

i went for communism and switched to state property and free religion. i kept representation, slavery, and beaurocracy but i should have switched to nationalism because it would have saved me 60 gold a turn!

i attacked isabella to get two cities, but she wouldn't make peace so i had to finish her off. i never had to fight cyrus or huyana because i made friends with them early. i converted cyrus to confucianism and gave them tech. late in the game, they went to war with eachother.

after isabella i built the spaceship. that was a fun game. the board was fun and the situations were fun. all the crazy stuff everywhere made city placement interesting. and ikhandas are really really good.

cabert · Feb 14, 2007

After more than one year, i'm still playing this with my feet!

late domination victory for 39k score.

I had a good start in my own opinion, but lacked the faith in impis to go all the way lexad did. I did whipe out India quite soon with them indeed, but I'm a domination guy, not a conqueror obviously.
And I'm so useed on relying on canons that this map totally disturbed me.
If I had been somehow intelligent, I would have gone for artillery, but I just didn't think of it :cry:

.
SO I ended up with catapults, trbeuchets and infantry in the 19th century.

What went wrong :
- built pyramids. Doesn't sound wrong, but for the price of this thing, I could have built an army of pyramids takers

- attacked Isabella AND cyrus in the same time. I was strong enough, no problem. But I ended up not being fast enough, and Isa vassalized to saladin. If I had simply gone for her, I would have finished her fast enough to prevent this (I had forgotten about the darn citadels!)
- lame diplomatic moves. Forgetting to check the map closely enough (and not reading the pregame thread) made me miss some obvious facts : no iron = no conquistadores, no crossbows, no canons. This made spain an easy target at knight time. Should have killed saladin early and made friends with her.

da_Vinci · Feb 15, 2007

Just got warlords installed last week, a quick look at the manual and jumped right in to WOTM 5 as my first warlords game (good thing it is just prince!).

First complaint is the iron deficiency anemia of my military! :eek:

Did not recognize that issue until I researched steel, and no cannons available! :confused:

Looked around, no iron anywhere! :cry:

But back to the begining ...

Settled in place, mining-masonry-BW-wheel.

War-Work-War-Ikhanda-War-Work

Built Great wall in 2400 BC

Built Pyramids in 1920 BC

Built Henge in 925 BC !! :eek:

Built Hanging Gardens in 225 BC.

Figured between courthouses and the maint reduction in the Ikhanda, a good time to go for a domination win, by conquering and keeping. Decided to attack the strongest AI first this time (used to go after weakest first), so went after Korea in 25 BC with axes and cats. By 680 AD he was dead.

By 1040 AD my score was 45,400 the highest I ever had. How to end with the highest score possible? Decided to conquer and keep, with a close watch on the score each turn. Asoka fell 1230, Saladin 1500, Izzy 1570, Capac 1730.

Only Cyrus was left. Trying to max score by maxing pop and staying below the land limit as long as possible. At 1730 base was 4669 with Firaxis of 74,747. Getting close to the dom limit, so planned a multiple city conquest at one time.

Positioned 5 stacks at 5 cities, and just as the assault was ready, land was at 63%. Now or never. Took all five from Cyrus, Domination victory in 1780 for base 5637 and Firaxis of 81,153.

Fastest Civ 4 win ever (never earlier than 1947 before), most points ever (never above 20,000 before). I ended with 66.89% land, and 92.66% of pop.

No vassal states the whole game, so it played like vanilla except the Great Wall, and the five great generals I popped (all led units ... maybe other uses are better?). No one would capitulate to me until just one city left (just kill at that point), and was always attacking the strongest AI, which kept the AI tech well behind me all game and may have prevented them vassaling to each other.

Next time, I'll try razing most cities and rebuilding at the very end (or just go for the conquest).

Final map shot below.

dV

Tyrith · Feb 15, 2007

Space race win in the 1940s sometime. Early axe war with India, knocked them out, then took a couple of cities from Korea before the Hwachas wounded my army enough that I had to quit. Waited to tech to macemen, went back to war with Korea and knocked them down to one core city plus a couple of scraps they took from the barbs. Then I got lazy and decided to just space race. I was several techs ahead of the AI for most of game, especially after Liberalism. Myself, Huayna, Saladin, and Cyrus were all Jewish for most the game (founded by Saladin) until Huayna went Free Religion. Eventually Saladin and Cyrus got angry at him and declared on him, eventually inviting me in. I accepted because I had a giant stack of tanks and artillery waiting just in case I needed to kill him, so I took a few cities, including Cuzco, then just waited it out.

WOTM 05 - Final Spoiler

King

Deity

Chieftain

King

oldfart

Warlord

King

oldfart

Deity

Chieftain

Emperor

Warlord

Ancient Mariner

Ancient Mariner

Deity

Fear him of the pink tie

Chieftain

Big mouth

Gypsy Prince

Attachments

Chieftain

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