WOTM 06 - Final Spoiler

[The Navy Seal]

On my second atempt this happened I couldn't believe it but all of a sudden I saw roosevelt and he gave me gunpouder for free! then the next turn augustus contacts and gives me nationalism for free!

 

[DaviddesJ]

Since the tech pace was Super Deity and the game was totally peaceful I decided to play for diplomatic win.

Very good. I was going to play for cultural, which I am pretty sure was possible (and I think I already had three religions at the first spoiler?). But I wasn't suffiicently motivated and I didn't pursue it to the end.

 

[ungy]

I forgot to submit my retired (challenger) game. Count me in the too tough for me this month column.

Way to go uberfish!

 

[zagnut]

I lost this game on Contender level to Rome which launched a spaceship in about 1940. However, it didn’t have to happen that way.

I was never in the game with regard to score, but did keep up in techs and even got the tech lead at the end. The fatal flaw in my game turned out to be not getting enough land to be able to out produce the big guys at the end. I was basically confined to the home continent. At one point the Incas did declare war on me and I promptly took two of their cities and made peace. They were Pleased with me when they started the war, and Pleased with me right after it. Go figure?

But those 2 cities didn’t give me enough land and I wasn’t in a position to be aggressive in the middle game. So I stayed with 7 cities throughout the game. By the late middle game I had bee-lined to Democracy and got the production boost from Emancipation that enabled me to almost win. I researched those techs that the leaders seemed to be ignoring and guessed right most of the time.

My initial plan was to go for a diplomatic victory. Most of the civs were Pleased or Friendly, except Isabella, and I tried to choose my civics wisely after I got the UN. However, the votes were continually inconclusive. I then had to try for a spaceship victory, but it appeared it would take me forever on epic speed and without a big production base. So I switched back a diplomatic try. I figured that if I turned off research I could build up my treasury and bribe the other civs with cash and techs I traded for. Well, that didn’t work either. And in the long run I probably could have achieved a space victory, if I had kept at it.

There had been no wars in the entire game except for Roosevelt and Isabella and the little Inca foray against me. However, toward the end the Romans got itchy and pretty soon there was a world war involving just about everyone but me. This slowed down the space race dramatically, but by then it was too late for me to crank up the space production I needed and so I lost.

Accolades to the staff for a good game, even if the Challenger folks gave you a hard time about it.

 

[Bigben34]

Challenger Disaster:
Fun game Gyathaar, I do enjoy an almost impossible game, keeps you on edge, and I think the contender on Monarch was just a bit too easy, but I am a bit disappointed that I chose challenger... I love islands maps... :-(
I don't think any of you read my posts about how the AI gets free extra settlers from huts on difficulties less than noble? This is a HUGE difference factor, IMO probably more significant than any other factor... I tested this extensively and commented on it in the pre-Game posts.
By carefully observing the land areas and population ratings during the first few turns, long before any increase in population or cultural borders more than the 2nd layer of tiles, I deduced that FOUR of my opponents had gotten free settlers, and one of them (I suspect Rome) Got TWO FREE SETTLERS!!! I had anticipated about 3 of teh civs receiving free settlers, but not that many...
Also, the reason buddhism and Hinduism were so often founded so early was because of free techs... both of these religions were founded around turns 7-8 in my game :-(

OK, so here was my progress to about 1200 ad or so when I retired:
--------------------------

I founded in place. Got a free silver mine!! Instead of making a city between the mountains I wanted to utilize more coastal tiles better so I made one on the horse island and one on the 2nd iron island, and one on the island S of my capital. Initially i just tried to land grab as fast as possible, as I had a good continent and wanted to keep the AI off of it... but I ended up over-expanding and this really hurt.
I did manage to get about 5 cheap techs from music or drama (forget...) but that was it for the tech race, lol

When Cathy settled on my iron i decided to invade her first. I made a quick rush with all my remaining archers to the city she had made (on the 2nd iron island), taking the city. I made a small army, and then invaded Cathy, took 3 cities, and was on the cusp of a decisive victory, when, failing to maintain good relations with Ceaser, he attacked me with an infantry, cavalry, and grenadier, and took my iron again!! lol. So 2nd time I lost the iron. So i rush my whole army/fleet of elephants, catapults, and a couple berserkers back home, expending my entire army to retake the city.
At this point I estimated I was about 15-20 techs behind the leaders, and expecting a destroyer from Ceaser any turn to elimante my naval superiority and finish my ocean resources. My people were disheartened and disillusioned with my shattered promises of glory and conquest, and I was assassinated by a couple of under-paid archers while fleeing a crowd of villagers who were demanding emancipation!!!

Bigben34

 

[Half Nelson]

Contender. Domination 1946 for 23960 points.

I thoroughly enjoyed this game, ideal for Vikings, but once I finally decided to go for Domination it took a while to close out.

I started by securing a strong home island with Trading Posts, Barracks and Forges in all cities. I built 5 cities on the mainland and one on each of the 3 islands to the South (for extra horses, iron and eventually coal:- all had a seafood resource as I recall). I went for early Sailing and circumnavigation. I tend to be production-heavy and built lots of workshops (I was generating at least twice the hammers of my nearest rival throughout the game:- this slowed my Tech progress a bit, but I was never far from the Tech lead). Despite this high productivity, I didn’t build a single Wonder (not even Heroic Epic) until after 1600, when I got access to marble and stone after vassaling Russia. I lost out on the GLib but didn’t bother with any other early GW. I beelined for Chemistry and Astronomy, only sidelined by a half-hearted attempt to grab Liberalism. I didn’t rush to Civil Service and my Beserkers were almost immediately upgraded to grenadiers after receiving CA bonuses. The Colossus was never built in this game:- it became obsolete very early in the general rush to Astronomy.

My two big weaknesses in Civ games (stretching back to Civ 1 days) are a hatrid of losing military units and a strong desire to keep my subjects happy (this used to be a big score modifier as I remember and I can’t kick the habit). Hence I spent too much time building markets etc and only attacking when I had significant advantage in military hardware. I had a core force of only 4 Beserker units with City Attack 3 promotions (further upgraded at intervals) for much of the game. These, backed up by a Medic 3 GG and a large navy, did (eventually) conquer the world. I should have built more when available but it was great to see them progress to Grenadier – Infantry – Mech Infantry. I had naval superiority from any early stage and only twice used a seige unit in anger:- all those lovely coastal cities to bombard from the safety of a ship! I did use CA3 tanks as amphibious units in the endgame (rolling straight out from Heroic Epic – West Point – Military Instructor city). They were highly effective, especially when further promoted with collateral damage bonuses.

My first target was Russia (closest, good resources) at the Beserker stage, completed with frigates and grenadiers (1238 -1600). Rome (my next target) was tech leader with a fairly large standing navy of Frigates but, for the first time EVER in a Civ game, I found ironclads to be a key unit. With 4MP, they had no problem bridging to the Roman homeland, where they acted as excellent bombards and invasion force protectors. I took out Rome (1750 -1875) and India (1882 – 1895) in quick succession using a half-dozen ironclads to control the coastal waters and blast at the city defences. After upgrading to destroyers and infantry, we conquered America (1903 – 1919) and finally Spain (1924 – 1945) with battleships, Mech Inf and bombers. Almost all cities were captured directly by amphibious attack:- in several cases I spared a single enemy unit at the end of the first assault, keeping my forces at sea to heal, then blasting reinforcements with rinse and repeat. The navies of Russia, Rome and India were destroyed in port, all ignoring the basic rule of naval warfare- that ships belong at sea. America and Spain put up more resistance, but I found Bombers to be highly effective in degrading battleships at sea for a coup de grace by my fleet. I lost a few units in the final push on Spain, including a couple of battleships and one of my treasured CA3 Beserker upgrades (I guess this was probably the 100th attack at 99% win chance):- the other three retired to a small island off the Spanish coast for the last few turns as the culture bar was ramped up and I waited nervously for my influence to spread between the captured cities (I just squeezed over the finish line without having to start a fight with my good friend HC).

This was my second Warlords game and my first taking vassals. The happiness / cost aspects didn’t seem that significant (happiness possibly was in hindsight but didn’t notice it at the time), but taking singleton resources (notably marble here) was helpful. I had envisaged my throng of vassals each researching a different Tech under my direction for an early space victory:- good plan but I assumed they would then trade them with me! I made the mistake of demanding Military Tradition from Cathy (vassal number 1) in annoyance at her first refusal:- big negative vibes and no Techs from her ever! Vassal cities were useful as advanced airbases in the endgame:- I had air supremacy for a long time and Bombers were useful in preparing cities for amphibious assault.

HC and I shared tech and Christianity for almost the whole game. He moved out from Friendly to Pleased at the endgame and had a half-complete spaceship, but without copper he stood little chance. In usual belt-and-braces fashion, I built Apollo and even completed the Space Elevator at the very death, but never started a single SS part! If required, I’m sure I could have put a SS together before HC. The only other GWs I built were the Pentagon and the Eiffel Tower. Spain completed the UN while my attentions were elsewhere, but I was a shoe-in for DG in any case at that point. I decided to press for Domination rather than a back-door Diplo win; it probably delayed my victory by 30 turns or so, but was more satisfying and also produced a higher score. In hindsight, I should have launched my attacks far earlier. Looking at the stats, I had a kill ratio of 131 / 13 for naval units and 294 / 18 for other combat units (including my initial scout who was mauled by a lion very early in the proceedings):- unmistakable evidence of my typical overcautious approach. Nevertheless, a very enjoyable game:- many thanks to the GOTM team!

 

[MarkM]

This was a fun map/game, but I think I did not take enough early advantage of Viking specialties & launch war early enough -- and then when I did fight, I fought Incas, I would have found it easier going to take on Cathy before she got cavalry (and also gotten more useful resources it turned out). In the end I think Cathy was the only civ I *didn't* fight at some point -- wanted to declare for a good stretch of the game, but always seemed to be having some other war thrust upon me. So there was a lot of work left to do still in late game, due to this failure of achieving at least one early knockout. Was playing for domination, was in 2nd place behind Rome still but gaining ground & lead in tech over most, was constantly fighting wars with just about everyone at some point and had gobbled up about half of HC's continent as well as many island cities. But it was a long slog & clear there was a still longer slog to go, because of all the wars I'd pretty much committed to military victory, and it became clear that domination would mean essentially total settlement/conquest of habitable land (due to all that land locked into the ice, etc), and total conquest would require lots of logistics of shipping armies around; it became clear I'd have to play marathon sessions to make deadline, and I could not focus on one opponent because every time I tried to do that the AI seemed to sense it and another civ would launch a surprise attack. So I was certainly not guaranteed of winning, not if I coasted anyway. Thus I kinda saw the writing on the wall about trying to finish this & pooped out early this month (somewhere around 18xx in game time?) and moved on to GOTM16.

As far as what was most noteworthy -- the most damaging surprise attack was by the Romans, who were friendly with me, and the SAME TURN he declared war a stack of 4 frigates and 5-6 transports loaded with knights cannons etc appeared on top of my iron producing city founded where the goody hut had been & took it by the 2nd-3rd turn of the war. That Roman surprise attack was a brilliant if treacherous move by the AI, simultaneously taking out my main production city & only source of iron at the time, while I was off fighting a war against Roosevelt or someone like that (who had each also declared war on me, though not with such devastating lightning effect). That probably could (should) have knocked me out of the running completely had he followed up or solidified his position (at the very least it destroyed my chance of pulling ahead of the pack befroe the end of the game) -- but for some reason he left the whole naval force sitting in the city, moved some of the cannon and knights out & didn't move in any good city defenders, and also didn't put any units in defensive position on the iron (like I had when he attacked me, and chewed up a lot of his units which were forced to make amphibious assault). When I finally gathered forces & launched my counterattack to retake the city I landed unopposed on the iron, and though I lost a lot of units, when I finally retook the city, I destroyed a navy of almost 12 ships (which gave me a HUGE breathing space). So the battle for that city arguably cost him as much or more as it did me in the end. The AI seems capable of brilliant initiative at times, but then just seems to fall asleep ...

This was a fun game, could have been funner (and possible for me to complete) if I'd gotten more aggressive early, and/or we had longer to play. The later resource placement (aluminum and oil) made it particularly interesting, it was very hard to guarantee my supplies of these given the early choices I'd made about conquest targets. For me at least, maps with lots of islands means a lot slower going in real world time ...

 

[ungy]

I don't think any of you read my posts about how the AI gets free extra settlers from huts on difficulties less than noble? This is a HUGE difference factor, IMO probably more significant than any other factor... I tested this extensively and commented on it in the pre-Game posts.

Free settlers was not the problem, the problem was the AI research pace. The AI research bonus also meant that the AI offered much less in trade than normal, which nerfed the usual high level strategy of beelining/lightbulbing until you have something tradable.

On immortal all the AI would get an extra worker and settler over monarch and that would have been MUCH easier than this.

 

[Htadus]

For the second WOTM in a row, I did not get to submit a game. This time the Peuter cooperated but just ran out of time because I started real late. I wish we can submit just incomplete game without having to Retire.

Anyways, out of necessity to speed up the game, I chose a fast paced tech game toward the UN and kept most Civs happy or pleased with me hoping Izzie or Franklin being my opponent. But it turned out my buddy Catherine was my competition and Huayna was +13 with her Vs +12 with me. Tech pace was very fast with Ragnar leading it. Started the Un in 1670 AD, 14 turns later in 1712 Izzy declared, 40 turns later we built the UN in 1770 AD. With 20 minutes to go to submit deadline in 1816 AD, I called it quits for the moment.

Did Right :

Built the Pyramids.
Use 3 GP farms and was basically giving away techs.
100 percent Science for most of the Game.
5 Academies each giving about 30-75 additional beakers.


Did Wrong :

Only Build 6 Cities (Had room for about 5 more with two on the large island).
Did not grab land when available.
*Not attacking Izzi while we were so far ahead of her.
*Not Attacking Huayna with our swords when he was just defending with 2 archers.
Choosing Uranium instead of Oil during late expansion.
Missing Liberalism because since we were so far ahead in techs, instead of studying Liberalism we went and learned some other tech. FDR beat us to it by 2 turns.
Did not emphasize Great Engineers as it became close to building the UN. Two of the Acadamies could have been a Fast UN.
Did not build any temples to allow for city growth (Nidaros was limited to 14 at best.) or run the HR civic.

*No wars declared due to the limited playing time.

Now that I have a lot more time (I do not think I will last long as Immortal Persia), I will pick up the game from after missing the Liberalism and take a Monger detour.

 

[Bigben34]

Free settlers was not the problem, the problem was the AI research pace. The AI research bonus also meant that the AI offered much less in trade than normal, which nerfed the usual high level strategy of beelining/lightbulbing until you have something tradable.

On immortal all the AI would get an extra worker and settler over monarch and that would have been MUCH easier than this.

I didn't think the AI got a free settler until Deity. Normally there is only a little less than a 15% difference in the AI's bonus to research between Monarch and Deity. So, although there are other significant bonuses, I think the extra settler accounts for much of the extra difficulty of Deity games. From what I've seen in the HOF posts, most Deity victories come from smaller land maps where a player can do some quick conquesting. Other than that, on larger maps like this one I think victories are pretty much limited to a diplomatic or rare cultural win.
I agree about what your saying about falling behind in the tech trading race. But I think the overall AI growth rate (and therefore research rate) may be more responsible here then the AI research rate bonus.
When I created a test map, with a carefully controlled environment, the AI players set to settler didn't research any faster than on a normal monarch map! I concluded that the computer uses the human's difficulty rating to decide most of the AI's bonuses, except for goody hut bonuses, and tech trading with each other, which seem to rely upon whatever difficulty that particular civ has.
If a civ gets an extra settler (or two as one of my opponents did) that nearly doubles that civs rate of growth, which will exponentially increase all factors of growth, including research. I think a simple mathematical model of an exponential growth curve could demonstrate this, just double the initial constant and see how it affects the growth. Certainly, though, your point would also be valid if the AI really does have in insanely faster research rate, but that isn't what I found in my test game.

This could be tested.. make a similar test-game with no goody huts, I bet it would be noticeably more playable, though it could still be extremely difficult to keep up if the AI are essentially trading exclusively with each other, but that could make an interesting variation.

Bigben34

 

[DaviddesJ]

When I created a test map, with a carefully controlled environment, the AI players set to settler didn't research any faster than on a normal monarch map!

I think this means that your test game was different from the real game. It's just not plausible that they weren't researching much faster. They couldn't have made it to Alphabet nearly as fast as they did (they never would have gotten there so fast on Monarch).

Although, I think the biggest source of difficulty in this (Challenger) game was simply that the AIs were so willing to trade with each other, and so unwilling to trade (on reasonable terms) with the human player.

If a civ gets an extra settler (or two as one of my opponents did) that nearly doubles that civs rate of growth, which will exponentially increase all factors of growth, including research.

I think on an island map, it's not a huge difference, because they run out of space anyway. On a pangaea map, that might have been a big factor, but here I (and the other people who tried Challenger) had no problem colonizing our whole island.

 

[Harbourboy]

On my second atempt this happened I couldn't believe it but all of a sudden I saw roosevelt and he gave me gunpouder for free! then the next turn augustus contacts and gives me nationalism for free!

What? How does that happen? That has never happened to me in a Civ IV game ever.

 

[AgedOne]

What? How does that happen? That has never happened to me in a Civ IV game ever.

It has happened to me - and it doesn't feel good!
The AI will only do this if they are winning so easily that they are almost out of sight.
Then they give you this pitying smile and hand over something they had years ago. You can almost feel them roughing up your hair as they do it, and saying "good boy!".

To be honest, I would normally have packed in a game I was losing that badly, but the one I can remember was in a GOTM that I was trudging through to the bitter end.

 

[chunkymonkey]

Fun game!

Basic strat:

Pick 3 decent sites that can work lots of cottages.
Get a GP farm going for Great Artists.
Get to Liberalism as a soon as practicably possible.
Cash-rush missionaries, temples, and cathedrals.
Wack up the culture slider to 100% and coast!

It all went mostly to plan.

I concentrated on expansion, and let the religions spread to me. Hinduism and Confucianism did. I set up my GA farm and starting pumping out the Artists. Got 12 in total, half of which I settled, and half I used for Great works in the weak city. I found Taoism and Islam. Judaism also spread to me, which was a bonus, but I didn't think I'd need it.

I converted to Confucianism from Hinduism half way through the game to jeep Caesar quiet. Other than that I was left alone for the most part. Nobody really demanded anything from me. Roosevelt built the Pyramids - which I wasn't going to conquer, so researched to Democracy for US. Emancipation helped the cottage super-sizing too.

I realise I'd made a mistake in dishing out my Artists. Two of my cities were running away from my weak city (bjorgvin), even with its 6 Great Works. Stupidly, I had rushed Hermitage in my strong (hathaibu) city too, which would have helped. So, to compensate, I moved the Palace to Bjorgvin, and also risked wasting a lot of money on missionaries to spread the fifth religion - Judaism to another cities. The spread was lucky. I think it paid off.

HC declared in 1706, and pillaged all my seafood - annoying! That cost me probably 30 turns or so, whilst my starved culture cities got back up to full cottage working capacity.

First to turn Legendary was Haithabu in 1815, Nidaros was 10 turns later, and Bjorgvin was 18 turns later still. Wasn't too impressed with that spread - could have done better I think

Spoiler :

 

[DaviddesJ]

So it took me 40 turns of bribery (basically) after finishing the UN to get the win, but I'm glad it was actually possible.

Did uberfish not submit his challenger win?

 

[uberfish]

Did uberfish not submit his challenger win?

I submitted it and got a confirmation email. Conquistador reported a 1580 diplo win which I don't see on the results either. PMed Ainwood about it.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Game Status: Spaceship Loss to Rome
Game Date: 1873 AD
Base Score: 1988
Final Score: 2782
Entry class: Challenger

Spoiler The Early Game :

I chose the Challenger version of the game for the first time. I wanted to try another Cultural game and I felt that by upping the difficulty level, it would give me an extra challenge to overcome.

I sent my Scout NE then SE, followed by sending my Settler SE to the Grassland square. Seeing the Pigs, I felt that I could dare to return to our original starting location, but I also liked the idea of getting more Grassland squares in our city radius. So, I went North with my Settler onto the Grassland Forest, settling there on turn 2.

My Scout went Eastward, finding the East coast of our island. I wasn't certain that we were on an island at that point, so I kept scouting around, until I ran into a Bear. "Mmmmm, Scout for breakfast," said the Bear, and hence began several turns of pressing the Enter key.

After building a Worker, I built a Work Boat. If you paid attention, you'd have realised that I'd moved away from the Fish resource and you'd be asking why I would bother to make a Work Boat. Well, after losing that Scout, I really wanted to know for sure if we were on an island, and I wasn't prepared to feed the Bear any more than I had to.

I'm not certain if animals can get Combat Promotions, but I was not about to find out. It would be both neat and scary to see a Bear that is suited towards mauling Archers.

Spoiler Archer-Mauling Bear :

Please note that this image is for illustration purposes only. It was created using the World Builder. However, it does present Gyathaar with an interesting idea for future WOTMs...

My research began with Animal Husbandry, followed by Mining, The Wheel, Sailing, Writing, and The Alphabet.

I then made some Warriors and Settlers, to help populate what I soon confirmed to be an island. My Work Boat decided to move on to other pursuits, such as seeing what those red coloured waters were all about (the Russian Coast).

I saw the Gems, but I also saw the trap. I'd have to tech towards Iron Working, just to clear the Jungle on the square. If you saw my Bear picture, you'd notice that apparently, only Mining is required in order to use the Gems, although once you've researched Mining and moved your Worker to the appropriate square, then and only then does the game let you know that your Worker can't find the Gems within the dense foliage. Every game that I go for Iron Working early on, it seems that several AI have researched it by the time that I research The Alphabet and I wonder if I could have traded for it, if I'd waited. If we were the Romans or the Zulus, teching towards Bronze and Iron Working myself made sense, but in this game, I wanted to try to trade for one of them, if not both of them.

Thus, my second city was settled by some Horses, as I already had Animal Husbandry and I didn't see anywhere else where I could place a city and work a resource.

Since I had no plans to build The Great Lighthouse and since I felt that capturing it would be rather unlikely, I didn't bother to place my second city on the Coast. Instead, I tried for a location that would maximize Grassland squares, hoping to make it my 2nd Legendary City.

Unfortunately, it wasn't soon after placing this city that I lost my second fight of the game. My fortified Warrior was sitting in a tree in the Forest. With a Combat I promotion, he must have felt invinsible, as he fell asleep and was ambushed by an unpromoted Barbarian Warrior.

When I next met that Barbarian Warrior, it had Combat I and Combat II promotions, so I ended up having to run from him, allowing him to pillage some of my lands before he finally suicided on my city defender. Whieh! I wasn't sure what would happen if I lost my second of two cities to the Barbarians, what with a connected Horse Resource being within the 1 square radius of the city's cultural boundaries.

As the game progressed, I targetted building multiple Barracks and military units. Over time, I slowly settled my island.

Unfortunately, the Romans were quick settlers: they settled a city off of my West Coast, grabbing two Fish resources as early as 1240 BC. I was a bit upset as, after finding the second Fish resource, I had decided that that location was going to be my Great Artist factory. As it was, it wasn't until late in the game (the 1300s or so) that I finally built my first Great Person.

The two huts near our starting location gave me a free Warrior with a Combat I Promotion and some Gold (43 Gold or so).

Spoiler Technology Trading and Wonders :

In 880 BC, Augustus popped out The Oracle, securing a game-long-lasting tech lead.

The tech rate was incredibly high--I only got a leg up on The Alphabet, which I researched in 805 BC. I wasn't even able to trade it for much--one low-level tech for The Alphabet per trade was probably the maximum that I could get. At least I was able to get Bronze Working, if not Iron Working, in this manner. A turn or two after trading it to a few AI, it was traded around to the other AI by those with whom I'd traded, apparently even between religious rivals (the US had founded Hinduism while Spain had founded Buddhism and yet Isabella still had the nerve to hand over The Alphabet to Roosevelt).

If the AI were going to be so greedy in their trade exchanges with me, it really would have been a lot fairer if they were also greedy with each other. As it was, they all seemed to give away technologies to each other faster than their scientists could research them. The game felt like Civ I, where the AI all had it out for you from the start. The only major difference being that, as opposed to Civ I, the AI were actually pretty good.

The only other trade for my technology that I managed to make was Drama to the US, who'd been the only one not to want it from other AI. I believe that I obtained Archery in trade.

I received a couple of techs for selling my world maps, but again, they were techs in the second columns of techs--techs such as Meditation, etc.

I did get a one-time gift of Metal Casting from Isabella, in 205 BC, but no further gifts seemed to be forth-coming for a long time. I ended up paying her back, in demands of Gold and Horses, in the later years. It actually wasn't until 1607 AD that the US gave me Feudalism, with one turn of research remaining. I received no further gifts from the AI. I wonder if they are programmed to give more gifts at higher difficulty levels and hence, even though they owned me research-wise, they were hesitant to help me out. I certainly received more help during the last GOTM, which had a difficulty level of Diety.

Augustus, not wanting to let go of his tech lead, completed The Colossus in 595 BC, The Great Lighthouse in 340 BC, and The Temple of Artemis in 190 BC.

Strangely, The Pyramids were not claimed until 830 AD, by Asoka. Had I known they would have been up for grabs for that long, they would have long ago been built by me.

Anyway, it appears that the AI got so far ahead in tech that Stonehenge was obsolete before they could get the time to build it! So, for the extra commerce and Great People Points, I completed it in 1340 AD. That date has got to be some kind of a record, don't you think?

Spoiler War, what is it good for? :

The US declared on Isabella around the time of her Metal Casting gift. I refused to join in on the US' side and waited for Isabella to ask me for help. She never asked, so the war fizzled out without any exchange of cities.

Even with a focus on military right from the start, I couldn't seem to get going strong enough. It wasn't for ages until I declared war on my first victim, Huayna. Even then, I had Chariots, Swordsmen, a couple of War Elephants, and Catapults against Longbowmen, Crossbowmen, Catapults, Macemen, and Knights. As time wore on, Huayna started sending Grenadiers my way, as well. The war was ugly, but I managed to obtain and keep two culturally-pressed cities on his East Coast.

Huayna's Frigates were chewing up my boats. Meanwhile, he dropped off an assault force, including a Grenadier, a Catapult, and a Knight, just outside of the city that I'd captured on the NE end of his island, the city with the Elephant, Fish, and Banana. I managed to fend him off, losing several key troops, but keeping the city.

I was finally building some momentum when I was able to upgrade my Swordsmen to Berserkers, amazingly getting the Amphibious promotion for free, when Augustus decided he wanted to pick my bones clean.

2 Frigates escorted 2 Galleons, past the gaping sailors on my Triremes. They'd never dreamed of the likes of said ships--works of sheer beauty--my research pace kept me from even researching Optics until 1628 AD. Actually, Huayna had used similar kinds of boats, but we are talking about the eye-witness accounts of the Homeland Security Navy, or whatever you want to call the sailors that didn't sail over to Incan lands.

Next to my Iron city, which was placed on the mainland between some Mountain Peaks, Augustus unloaded a Cannon, a Cavalry, 2 Trebuchets, a Catapult, and a Longbowman. The Longbowman was a clear declaration that he felt he could easily overwhelm me, take my city, and be here to stay. Such sheer audacity!

Defending on my side were a Trebuchet, a War Elephant, an Archer, and a quickly pop-rushed Catapult. I managed to survive a round of assaults, losing almost all of my units, while Augustus had only lost his Catapult. Reinforcements sailed into the city on a Galley and I was able to hold it long enough to survive.

I lost a lot of military units in that epic battle for the Iron city--several Trebuchets were sacrificed as I didn't have many Catapults handy--my Catapults were all trapped on Huayna's island without any nearby Galleys to ferry them back.

As a result of the landing, I panicked and gave all of my 450 or so Gold to Huayna, just to end the hostilities. I think that he would have settled for a much smaller price, but at the time, I wasn't even expecting him to accept.

I did lose a Clam to Augustus' pillaging Frigates, but thanks to the quick action of several suicidal Triremes, I managed to kill off a third Galleon of of Augustus' before the troops landed.

After that war, things got pretty quiet--I lost a few boats to Augustus' Triremes, but since they had been out exploring and hadn't been promoted to Frigates, I was able to kill off those boats. I have a feeling that Augustus was too lazy to build replacements as, although we stayed at war, you wouldn't have known it from the lack of further battles.

Spoiler Scrapping further war plans in favour of my economy :

At this point, already having upset Asoka and Catherine by declaring on Huayna, plus seeing as how Huayna had upgraded almost all of his military units to Grenadiers and Riflemen, I wasn't really in a position to declare war on him, yet. I couldn't touch Augustus' Riflemen, yet, either.

So I hunkered down and started finally working on my economy. At least with everyone knowing every single tech which I would research, the research rates were pretty reasonable.

However, lacking happiness resources, healthiness resources, and Emancipation, I couldn't keep most of my cities above size 6.

I also had failed to capture my targetted 3rd Legendary city from Huayna--it was the next city that I was going after, too--that moment of panic during Augustus' landing served its purpose and saved Huayna, probably also saving Augustus from losing to a Cultural Victory. At least it would have only been 2 Grenadiers and 1 Knight, plus 2 Longbowmen, a Maceman, and 2 Catapults that I would have had to face for that city. I believe that I could have pulled it off, although with heavy losses, as I was down to 1 War Elephant, 2 Berserkers with 3 experience each (so they were not very good at attacking cities), an Archer, and about 13 or so Catapults and Trebuchets. Huayna's Knight and one of his Grenadiers were even wounded, from attacking my units in the field. It would have been tight, but possible--it still would have taken about another 5 turns to get my units in position by the city, so it wasn't just a matter of attacking immediately.

My plan was to research as many techs as I could that would improve my Economy--Code of Laws for Courthouses, Compas for Harbours, Liturature so that I could focus one city on building the Heroic Epic and military units while having other cities focus on making buildings, Monarchy so that I could get a happiness resource from a Wine on an island that I had settled in 1364 AD, Printing Press for the extra Commerce, and Liberalism for the extra Commerce plus the extra Culture.

I still had only produced one Great Person--a Great Artist--which I settled in my capital in hopes of flipping the Roman city off of my West Coast. This plan was doomed to failure--Augustus' city still had 100% Roman culture at the end of the game.

I wasn't sure if I should research Guilds for the Grocers or if I should skip them and go straight for Chemistry. I decided that it was probably too late to be able to wage war, at least after having just spent a lot of commerce on building-oriented technologies, so I teched towards Banking.

During the time that I tried (and failed) to flip the nice city of Huayna's that I'd wanted for my 3rd Legendary City, I'd used up two Great Artists, settling them in the closer of the two cities that I'd captured from Huayna. An interesting consequence was that I at least obtained some resources from Huayna.

For example, I had an Oil well. However, without scientific knowledge of what that "black stuff" was, it was only used by the local street urchins for face painting and graffiti art. Had the street urchins known how toxic this substance can be, they probably wouldn't have followed those pursuits.

Spoiler On to a Cultural Victory? :

As for my cultural aspirations, they were a bust.

I'd started producing Missionaries way too late; I started to build my first one in 1646 AD. At the time, I had 6 religions available, but only Confucianism existed in more than 1 of my cities.

With the logistics of ferrying around Missionaries, I ended up sending around way more than I'd wanted. I actually ended up trying to put all 6 Religions everywhere, which was just a waste of resources, as they often failed to spread many times in a row.

I didn't actually get going on 100% culture until some time in the early 1800s.

Spoiler The blood begins to flow :

Of course, Catherine, with whom I had a Defensive Pact, didn't like the fact that I also had a Defensive Pact with Roosevelt and Asoka. So in 1827 AD, she turned words into actions and declared war on me.

I was only presented with the option of replying "So be it!", which isn't much of an option at all. I wasn't even able to choose a preferable option, such as: "Pretty please, with monkeys and sugar on top, don't hurt me".

Catherine hadn't played fair at all. On the same turn as her war declaration, she landed her troops, which consisted of a Tank, an Artillery, and 5 Gunships!

Okay, not so bad, right?

Spoiler Catherine's betrayal :

Actually, it was quite bad! I had turned off research a long time ago. Sure, I'd finally researched Feudalism and Guilds, but I didn't have Gunpowder or Military Tradition.

Catherine landed her stack of troops on my East Coast, escorted by Destroyers, on the same turn that she declared war. It's not like I would have been able to attack her ships and win, with the 5 or 6 Triremes that I would have been able to pull together within a turn or two, but it would have been nice to at least have had the chance.

To make matters worse, I was using Emancipation, not Slavery, so I couldn't pop-rush any defenders. Down the drain went my Gold reserves during this war effort, plus many turns' worth of additional Commerce.

At 630 Gold a pop, even without a Barracks, a Longbowman sounds cheap, compared to having your city taken over and Catherine establishing a base on your continent.

Initially, I only had a Horse Archer defending the city by which Catherine landed. Obviously, I immediately upgraded the Horse Archer to a Knight. I was able to cash-rush a Longbowman in just about all of my nearby cities, so at least I'd have one extra defender in that city. I was also able to move a couple of troops from a nearby city. Further, I ferried a couple of Galleys' worth of troops from my Horse-island city.

Here's what happened after I ended my turn:
Trireme loses to: Russian Destroyer (30.00/30)
Longbowman loses to: Russian Artillery (9.90/18)
Berserker loses to: Russian Gunship (13.92/24)
Berserker loses to: Russian Gunship (9.60/24)
Longbowman loses to: Russian Gunship (17.76/24)
Catapult loses to: Russian Gunship (21.60/24)
Trebuchet loses to: Russian Gunship (24.00/24)
Knight loses to: Russian Tank (24.92/28)
Pikeman loses to: Russian Tank (24.92/28)

As you can see, I was able to mount a sizable number of units in defense, but now I was back to square one again. So the money-rushing of units (at double the price) continued. I was able to ferry a couple of more Catapults using my ships and some other Catapults had arrived from my Western cities, so I threw them at whatever I could.

I learned Gunpowder at the end of the second turn of war. However, that tech didn't help me much--it cost so much to rush-purchase a Musketman that I believe I only bought one or two of them.

Anyway, my suicidal Catapults had the desired effect, such that Catherine's units were weakening and decided to spread out. Of course, this fact would be bad for future Catapult attacks, but it also meant that the attacks were no longer focused. Some of the Gunships had actually started attacking a second city, my 2nd Legendary-City-to-be, so neither city under attack ended up being captured. It seemed wasteful for the Artillery to keep bombarding the one city while the Gunships ran off after the second city, but I wasn't the one in charge of that military operation.

Here's what happened on Catherine's turn, again without me losing a city (yet):
Caravel loses to: Russian Destroyer (27.60/30)
Longbowman loses to: Russian Gunship (10.56/24)
Knight loses to: Russian Gunship (10.56/24)
Catapult loses to: Russian Gunship (17.28/24)
Catapult loses to: Russian Gunship (19.20/24)
Trebuchet loses to: Russian Gunship (20.64/24)
Worker loses to: Russian Tank (26.32/28)

On Catherine's next turn, the Gunships kept attacking and continued getting wounded, but I received the lucky break that I'd been waiting for:
Worker loses to: Russian Tank (26.32/28)
Berserker defeats (3.52/8): Russian Tank

Wow, do Berserkers kick butt, or what? I guess the extra Culture from Uppsala, my 2nd Legendary-City-to-be (actually, it was never to be, but let me have my moment, please) helped a lot, plus the fact that it was the other city which had been bombarded.

After this point, I realised that I had the upper hand. As long as I could kill off Catherine's Artillery, the Gunships would continue to be annoying, but I could keep rush-buying units and eventually fend them off before they healed. The Gunships couldn't capture a city, so they were useless on their own. I guessed that as long as Catherine didn't occupy a city on my continent, she wouldn't send further troops.

I threw units at that Artillery until it died:
Catapult loses to: Russian Artillery (13.86/18)
Catapult loses to: Russian Artillery (13.86/18)
Knight defeats (7.60/10): Russian Artillery

I ganged up on the Gunships one by one, waiting for them to first be reasonably wounded from attacking my cities' defenders for a couple of turns. I picked each of them off at the cost of several suicidal units.

At last, the threat was over. For an outlay of another 2200 Gold, Catherine was happy enough to leave me alone.

Spoiler The remains of my plans :

Well, after trashing my economy, there wasn't actually a whole lot left. I at least still had reasonably-sized Legendary-wannabe cities, since I had been using Emancipation and was not able to whip the citizens during the war. However, I was still slightly more than a hundred turns away from victory, assuming that I was able to produce a few more Great Artists.

I simply focused as much as I could on pumping out the culture, in vain hopes that the AI would give up on the space race.

Really, it was only a matter of time before I lost the game.

The AI each started pumping out their Apollo Programs, followed by space ship parts. None of them seemed to want to go to war with each other.

Still lacking any advanced military units beyond the odd Mustketman, I was content to be at peace with everyone. I really did not relish the thought of having to face off against Tanks, Infantry, Marines, SAM Infantry, Battleships, and all of the other sorts of assorted weaponry that they had at their disposal.

Augustus started on the space race first, so it was not a big surprise that he finished it first.

Interestingly, I could have helped to vote in Isabella as leader of the world. She certainly tried her best, but I crushed her vote in 1868 AD, only a few turns before Augustus launched his space ship. Even more interesting was that Augustus was prepared to throw away the win and voted for Isabella.

Spoiler Isabella's near Victory :

Overall, the game was enjoyable. However, it's going to be quite a while before I will feel ready to try the Challenger version of the saved games again.

Spoiler Neat screenshot of the game :

Here, you can see that Augustus must have been using up valuable CPU cycles on my computer, bombing away at this poor, defenseless (yet, invinsible, due to his location) Barbarian Warrior.

 

[Thrallia]

it would have been neat to see a diplo loss though, rather than the standard conquest and space losses.

btw, I enjoy your spoilers...why don't you attempt the games during the same month they are released, rather than waiting a couple months?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Thanks, Thrallia, for your encouragement!

Indeed, a Diplo Loss would have been a neat result. Perhaps in the future, when I see defeat as being almost certain, I'll try and encourage the AI to beat me in a less-than-standard way.

Actually, I think that the hardest victory condition for the AI to achieve will be a Cultural Victory. Perhaps in a future GOTM/WOTM game, I'll even intentionally try to achieve this loss condition from the get-go. Such a scenario would certainly make for an interesting write-up.

In this game, however, I stubbornly clung to the hope that the AI would get into a world war, allowing me to win by culture. Such a war had happened once earlier, which I didn't mention in my write-up, when, if I recall correctly, the US declared war for the second time on Spain, but this time, Isabella had Defensive Pact partners. Although peace had broken out and had lasted for quite some time, there was always hope that it would happen again.

As for the timing of when I play, I've consistently submitted all GOTM and WOTM games on time since my first one, WOTM 02. I've simply gotten behind on submitting my write-ups. Rather than skipping a bunch of write-ups, I'm in the process of trying to catch up on my write-up backlog.

 

[Thrallia]

ah, that makes sense then...good luck on catching up in your spoilers!