WOTM 06 - Final Spoiler

[Doc TK]

To get to rome im pretty sure you had to cross the ocean, were you waiting until astronomy to make your first move?

That's a really good point that I hadn't realized. I think I could cross because of a cultural bridge. But, if I recall correctly, that doesn't work once you declare war. So, maybe I couldn't attack Romans until later in the game. So going after Cathy may have been right.

Was anyone able to go after Romans first?

 

[RobertTheBruce]

That's a really good point that I hadn't realized. I think I could cross because of a cultural bridge. But, if I recall correctly, that doesn't work once you declare war. So, maybe I couldn't attack Romans until later in the game. So going after Cathy may have been right.

Was anyone able to go after Romans first?

I didn't have a cultural bridge so the Romans weren't an option. I probably would have attacked the Russians anyway. The Romans easily beat me to Iron Working and I didn't want to face praetorians without berserkers.

I had only lightly scouted Cathy's land so I saw some resources I wanted and was hoping for a good production city (with didn't exist) on the far side of her island.

 

[Thrallia]

I had built up an army to attack Rome, but Huayna declared war on me first...Otherwise, Rome would have been my first target.

India was touching Rome and accessible via coast IIRC, so if you had an OB with Asoka you could still reach Rome, it would just take a very long time...regardless, when I did declare war on Rome(still before Astro), I hid my ships in Indian waters so that when I declared war it wouldn't get kicked back out again.

 

[AgedOne]

That's a really good point that I hadn't realized. I think I could cross because of a cultural bridge. But, if I recall correctly, that doesn't work once you declare war. So, maybe I couldn't attack Romans until later in the game. So going after Cathy may have been right.

Was anyone able to go after Romans first?

I realised I've been discussing this with my brain in the off position. Went back and looked at my 500AD save. The border visible in the screenshot I posted was, of course, the expanded border of Pisae. Once war had been declared, Caesar would have been inaccessible due to the strip of ocean.
In this aspect, it was an identical situation to the one that caused such fun in the earlier GOTM (14 iirc) where we as Napoleon could reach India via the cultural bridge - up until the moment we collapsed it!

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I realised I've been discussing this with my brain in the off position. Went back and looked at my 500AD save. The border visible in the screenshot I posted was, of course, the expanded border of Pisae. Once war had been declared, Caesar would have been inaccessible due to the strip of ocean.
In this aspect, it was an identical situation to the one that caused such fun in the earlier GOTM (14 iirc) where we as Napoleon could reach India via the cultural bridge - up until the moment we collapsed it!

No, not identical. This is Warlords, not Vanilla Civ. In Warlords they changed the rules so you can still sail inside cultural borders if you're at war. The danger in this game is in capturing the city whose cultural borders you're using, as then you will get stuck!

Personally I prefered the old way - made for much more interesting strategy choices. Not sure why Firaxis changed it.

 

[Gyathaar]

Personally I prefered the old way - made for much more interesting strategy choices. Not sure why Firaxis changed it.

I expect it was so that non coastal water resources would not be immune from pillage before astronomy, but i dont know for sure

 

[AgedOne]

No, not identical. This is Warlords, not Vanilla Civ. In Warlords they changed the rules so you can still sail inside cultural borders if you're at war.

*puts hands over head and rests forehead gently on keyboard*
I can't cope any more! I didn't realise that had changed. (but I am exceedingly ancient )
You'll be telling me next the Throne Room has gone - and Civil War sweeping through a civ when you take an enemy capital

 

[Airny]

I add this sentence, because the description of my game is so short. ^^

Retired in 1750 AD

My goal was a cultural victory, I hoped to get a shot at fastest culture.
-settled in place
-techpath: mining, bronzeworking, sailing, masonry, AH, writing, mathematics
-built a workboat, warrior, worker, trireme, pyramids
-improved the hills for production and pigs later, prechopped forests
-chopped forests to get pyramids in 430BC
-pumped out settlers to get 6 cities on my continent
After that I followed the usual path to liberalism (got beaten by it in 1286 by Augustus), which i researched 1364AD.
I then stopped research, Augustus gave me printing press and some other techs.
I had no military other than archer&warrior. Catherine decided to attack me in 1750AD putting 3 riflemen next to my warrior (no iron, no upgrade). I was surprised that she attacked, I had +1 attitude to her.
Catherine the spoiler:

Spoiler :

I had 5 artists and 2 cities with >10k culture at that moment:

Spoiler :

Do I need more units to get a higher "power" to avoid such things?
What can I do to avoid being attacked?
I had 0% research of course, so no techtrading possible.
Does gifting units improve relations?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Do I need more units to get a higher "power" to avoid such things?
What can I do to avoid being attacked?
I had 0% research of course, so no techtrading possible.
Does gifting units improve relations?

Oooh bad luck on the attack. (Did you check whether it'd be possible to buy iron from someone else so you could upgrade your units?) Going cultural does involve a risk because you get behind in tech in the late game. You probably need to make sure you have something more powerful than archers nevertheless. It's also a good idea to try and make sure you're ahead of the AI when you stop research, and then use tech trades carefully to make sure you still have things to trade for some time afterwards. Personally, unless I'm massively more powerful than everyone else, I'll tend to make sure I either have or am likely to be able to trade to get (preferably) grenadiers or (possibly) cavalry.

Your chances of being attacked go down if you have a bigger army (being in a defensive pact helps a lot too), or if you have better relations. I believe AIs will never attack you if they are friendly towards you, but some of the leaders might attack even if they are pleased and all of them might attack if they are cautious. I don't believe gifting units improves relations but I may be wrong.

 

[Airny]

Thanks DynamicSpirit, good to know that cautious is a bad for peace. ^^
Not having iron was for sure my own mistake. If this would be a gauntlet... but I learned it the hard way.

By the way, I was in a defensive pact with Asoka. That didn't seem to scare evil Cathy at all. Is a pact with a more powerful AI better?

 

[Thrallia]

The more powerful an AI that you are DPd with, the better.

When an AI decides to attack you, the only thing that will change its mind is it you get much more powerful than it....and it considers the combined power of you and anyone else you have a defensive pact with.

Also, yes...you definitely need to attempt to get great relations with every AI. I think if Cathy hadn't attacked you its likely that Huayna would have unless he was friendly to you because of how low your power rating was.

 

[Airny]

Lol, I think I've forgotten a lot due to the disappointment. Hyana declared war on me once indeed! But only visited me with his galley to pillage fish. He made peace for 60gold and was quiet after that.

 

[pigswill]

Contender. 1870 space victory.
At 5ad I had 5 cities, no wonders, no religions. Got Taoism about 200ad, Colossus 650ad. Traded philosophy widely to catch up on techs and still got liberalism.
Invaded Russia about 1100 ad, captured three biggest cities quickly then made significant mistake of accepting capitulation. Culture pressure from remaining Russian cities really hampered growth. Fortunately by 1500ad Catherine was able to escape capitulation allowing me to declare and clear the island.
Then it was basically peace all the way. Seriously messed up space race by researching in wrong order (first part I completed was engine!).
I'm wondering if space was the way to go in this game as there were so few high production sites available for building parts.
Not a disaster of a game but really quite sub-optimal.

 

[Dumpfbacke]

Started out quite focused, vasalled Cathy, the Huayna, then Rome.
Didnt touch the game for a week due to a ski vacation, and lost all interest in it. Eventually got around and finished it, but very unfocused. The late-game can be so tedious, especially as the AI kept building cities on 1-tile islands.

Goal was to vasallize everyone but didnt pay attention and crossed the domination limit just a few turns before Isabell capitulated. Should have razed a city or 2 but got annoyed with the AI putting crappy cities in whatever icy tile I left uncovered.

Is there anything special happening when you vasall ALL civs (didnt destroy anyone). Does it trigger a domination vic, or a Conquest, or does it actually make both impossible as you cannot conquer / gain more land ?

Could go back 10 turns and try to replay but really not in the mood...

 

[Thrallia]

if everyone is vassalized you win a conquest victory

 

[Sec]

I typed a longish report, but this stupid forum software ate it. I just popped up "You are not logged in, give me your password" time after time without doing anything.

I don't want to retype it, so here you go with the basics:

Game status: Spaceship Loss to Rome
Game date: 1968 AD
Base score: 4157
Final score: 5818

 

[Harbourboy]

Glad to see that not everyone is superhuman and that some people actually do lose when playing!

 

[orb]

Well, it looks like most people got wins of various descriptions in this game...I just want to buck the trend with a Spaceship loss. - This is becoming an annoying habit.

Shame as I was really looking forward to this game.

It started well enough, I actually moved the settler to the SE blue circle as I've been wondering about blue cirlce placement following other threads. - I thought it might be good. - I think I was wrong.

Settled the main island and outlying islands quickly then researched towards getting Berserkers.

I had a brief moment of glory when my Berserker fleet attacked Catherine, capturing her northern island city of Yakutsk and sacking the mainland Novosibirsk (?), until Cossacks arrived on my iron resource and the war was halted.

The plan was to go back to Russia with a new force, but just as this was assembling Rome declared on me. - My Frigates were no match for Rome's Destroyers (You can see how far behind in tech I was by this point) so the sea's became unsafe.

Unfortuantely no matter what I did I couldn't end the war with Rome and I ended up getting bombed back into the Stoneage by the Roman airforce.

In my game no AI managed to achieve military dominance. All home islands remained in the possession of their original settlers.

It was America who achieved the Spacerace victory first.

So my post match analysis. - What did I do wrong?

Well my city placement wasn't great,
My economy bombed due to lack of courthouses early on, which caused me to fall behind in tech, which caused me to lose the game.

Next game I've got to give a higher priority to COL research.

I'll be watching the results tables closely to see if I can improve on my current 388th place!!!

 

[Sec]

Another day, another try for a short summary of my lost game (see above).

I settled in place, just because I always do

I opted for 5 cities on my mainlaind, the last one was in the "inaccessible" spot between the two mountain peaks.

From reading here, It looks like nearly everybody attacked Cathrine at first. Well, she really liked me, so I went for Cupac (to the left) and took all but two cities there (being behind in tech, I had to stop when he got better units). Taking his land turned out to be a good thing, as it secured me most of the late-game resources which my mainland lacked.

Later Cathrine declared war on me (out of the blue. She was at >+10 IIRC). But I managed to sink most of her fleet relatively quickly (she only landed one army, luckily right next to my rally point - Then Isabella declared war, so I made peace with Cathy without retaliating, and went for Isabella instead. I managed to take two cities (and raze one -- two times as isabella immedeately resettled on the spot) when I had to make peace again because my units wer outdated :-/. This was a weedy move, as I now had two expensive cities which were in near constant revolt (and had only a few ocean tiles to themselves). The rest of the game was quite uneventful -- I went for the UN, but lacked quite some votes for the Diplo Win. As everyone else went for the spaceship at that point, I tried to play catch up.

I've never played for space race before (I think this is a cheap second-class victory) and it showed:
I was behind, so I thought I should go for the Space Elevator. -- Then I realized, I should've researched the Tech for the Apollo Project first %-) - This probably cost me the victory. In the end, I lost the Space race by 10 turns (I was lacking quite a few parts, but they were all due in max. 10 turns)

Ah well.

 

[Erkon]

So my post match analysis. - What did I do wrong?
...
My economy bombed due to lack of courthouses early on, which caused me to fall behind in tech, which caused me to lose the game.

Next game I've got to give a higher priority to COL research.
...

How many cottages did you run? You can easily run five cities on the starting continent without courthouses at research rate around 60%. Did you send out boats to meet other civs so you could trade?