WOTM 09 Final Spoiler

Gyathaar

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WOTM 09 Final Spoiler



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  1. Completed & submitted your game.



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  1. Please don't post screenshots, or discuss, locations of late-game resources (uranium, aluminium).
 
Conquest 605AD

It could be 5-7 turns earlier, if I did not settle 3d city.

First city in place, second 1N from horses, third on copper. Then mass-chop, slave and brick-by-brick production of war chariots and later war elephants and cats.

Warfare
Peter,
Washington,
Quin Chee Hyan
Saladin
Shaka
Elizabeth

PS первыйнах:)
 
I finished with a rather pedestrian Conquest victory in 1268 AD. I'll post details when I get home from work, but I completely suck at early warfare. It wouldn't surprise me if somebody won very close to 1 AD.

Edit: Looks like someone did win in BC times. Impressive job.
 
A few firsts for me. First Game of the Month. First ever conquest victory (1382AD so quite late I guess). My earliest finish date too. First time with raging barbs on. Only my second win on Prince! This was a lot easier than my other win though.

Summary:

Contender class.
62580 points

Elimination order: Peter, Qin, Washington, Elizabeth, Saladin, Shaka (vassal).

World Wonders built: Oracle, Great Wall, Pyramids, Colossus, Parthenon, Great Library, Great Lighthouse, captured Temple of Artemis. I was building Angkor Wat and Hagia Sophia for a laugh and some extra points at the end but they didn't get finished.

The Temple of Artemis was the only wonder that wasn't built by me, captured it anyway (Mecca). Didn't manage to get a prophet for any shrines but I got 2 great engineers which built the Pyramids and the Parthenon for me.

I was researching Guilds when I won.

I'll do a full update over the next few days.
 
i'm not so certain what to think of this wotm as an afterthought. the difficulty level has been rather low and the distribution of early strategic resources (bronze, iron and horses) has been in extreme favor of the human player.
taking out russia or at least moscow seems like an utterly easy task as you have access to bronze and horses as egypt. plus moscow and the spot east of it (1S of the one-tile lake) making for extremely good commerce powerhouses really plays into the hands of the human player. and given the terra map (prolly not hitting the domination limit without settling in the new world) this map is really catered for milking some incredible scores. at least i expect some really high scores :D

uhm, yeah that's my final spoiler :D winning this game should be a certain. it's just about how this is achieved. every type of victory should be possible.
 
Yup, it was definitely the easiest Prince game I have played. Raging barbs might have been a problem after the first 3 cities were founded but I had the Great Wall by then. And the pyramids for swapping between representation and police state. Iron popping up near Moscow helped as well (had to demolish a cottage though).

I made an error when I declared on Liz, her wandering warrior was trapped between 2 of my conquered Chinese cities at the time, and razed my newly built city by the gems, duh. So I wasted a bit of time in Shanghai getting another settler.

I would have liked to at least have had a look at the New World.

It will be interesting to see how people who didn't go for conquest got on.

I think the only challenge was the lack of happiness resources around but with representation (or monarchy) this was easily avoided. Heavy whipping helped too.
 
pretty easy game. I vassalized all civ except Saladin and Peter. Conquest victory somewhere in 1300-1500s I cant remember. All I remember is I have 6000+ gold and finish on the turn w/ discovery of democracy.

Order of Conquest: Russia (war chariot), China (war chariot, catapult, elephants), America (knight, maceman), Arabia (knight, trebuchet), England (cavalry), Zulu (cavalry, cannon).
 
Good news and bad news here. Good that I finished the game and won, bad that I'm not submitting (this was actually the first real game I finished and I kind of assumed the game makes automatic end save so I just exited to main menu instead of playing one more turn and saving). :blush:

I don't write as detailed report as I did for the first part but I'll note most important events.

1208: After finishing Russia before 500 AD I finally declared on China. I know this is awfully slow but at that time I still had difficulties in believeing that this Prince game was really so easy.

1220: I learned Optics and started to build couple of caravels to circumnavigate the globe.

1226: Captured first two Chinese cities.

1328: Circumnavigation.

1412: Zulus declare on me. They were quite pathetic nation at the time but still I made peace with the Chinese the next turn (Qin had probably 3 cities left at that time, maybe 5 - I'm not sure).

1472: First to learn Liberalism.

1535: The first major screw up - I accidentally attacked a Zulu city with my Medic III War Chariot (It was supposed to be a catapult). Of course it died. Not that it really mattered though :lol: I also sign temporary peace with Shaka.

1610: New war with the Zulus. I capitulate Shaka on 1652.

1732: I DoW to China again and conquer their last city on 1762. From that moment I believe I can win Domination Victory just by settling the New World all by myself (learned Astronomy on 1664 and been slowly building some ships, no else even has Astronomy and I haven't even seen lot of caravels).

1778: I capture the first barbarian city in the New World. I took one at the center. For few turns dozens of barb axes, horse archers, swords, warriors and other funny troops run against the machine guns defending my city. :lol:

1827: I've captured all barb cities in the southern part of the New World. I start spamming settlers to cover up the continent while the army starts marching north.

1877: I control most of the New World but I'm still clearly behind the Domination. I'm also about 2k points ahead Saladin who's #2. At first I think I'll go Space instead but then I (finally!!!) come to my senses and decide to get the Domination land from Saladin. All of my cities in the Old World start spamming tanks, marines, gunships, bombers and other modern military units.

1878: I DoW on Saladin (I already had lots of units ready on the border). Saladin's most advanced units are infantry and cavalry but he has lots of them. After a long and bloody campaign I finally reach...

1917: Domination Victory! My points were 22516. I'm sure I played very bad at times but at least I won :woohoo: I wonder if anyone manages to get later victory though :lol:
 
Good news and bad news here. Good that I finished the game and won, bad that I'm not submitting (this was actually the first real game I finished and I kind of assumed the game makes automatic end save so I just exited to main menu instead of playing one more turn and saving). :blush:

If you still have the autosave from the turn before victory, you could just load that up, and replay the final turn as close as possible to how you did last time, and repeat the win condition. Then submit, and send a note to the orginizers explaining you had to do this. I know that they have accepted such in the past when other people forgot to save after the victory.
 
If you still have the autosave from the turn before victory, you could just load that up, and replay the final turn as close as possible to how you did last time, and repeat the win condition. Then submit, and send a note to the orginizers explaining you had to do this. I know that they have accepted such in the past when other people forgot to save after the victory.

I still have autosave on enery 4 turns (Civ4 is very stable on my comp) and the previous one was, if I recall correctly, 3 turn before. I don't even want to ask that big exceptions. And on a positive note at last I know now how the system works :lol:
 
Well anyone who has read my previous posts will realise that military victories are not my strong point. - So when given the opportunity of playing Egypt, you guessed it, I chickened out and went for a cultural win. (Am I the only person in the world who went cultural for this game?)

My initial thoughts...A military win will need horses for chariots, and there are bound to be some natural warmongers out there in the AI nations.

I started the game and almost immediately found Peter. - Damn, in previous wars against Peter I've usually came out on the losing side.-- Lets make Peter our best friend. - So within 3 turns of the start I didn't want to fight my nearest neighbour. - OK Religion needed. - Just missed Hindu, got Jewdaism (Which fitted with my favorite "organised" strategy).

But problem number 2. My first warrior has confirmed that there is not a lot of land around the start position. - -OK first settler to the south to block Peter (or anyone else's) expansion. - Also better sight the city on the hill choke point incase Peter's entire Army come at me. (Better defence was a must even if the location was not ideal for city growth.) - Got the second city in place.

Then discovered horses to the West of the start and thought "Mmmm maybe I should use these horses....Nah grow those cities."

Third city settled on horses. - Plan was then to settle the islands. - Got the Eastern islands. Got the Beaver Island, but Peter beat me to the small stuff to the West. "No problem thinks I...My cultural cities will flip Peter's islands very soon".

By this point the world was dividing into 2 religious powers. - Jewdaism in the north, me, Peter and Qin. - Hinduism in the south from Saladin, Washington and Shaka. - I didn't like the idea of Washington and Shaka as enemies but at least my friend Peter would get a pasting before any Hindu believers got to my fortified hill city.

I only had 6 cities at this point so my optimal cultural approach was a bit hampered. So I added Christianity and Islam to my portfolio of belief and set about building temples and cathedrals of all types. - Made a few error with my third cultural city which was way behind the other two. - Had to build 2 cathedrals in that city and even then I failed to notice that I was a temple short to get the max benefit.

Anyway nothing happened for most of the game. - I briefly toyed with the idea of settling the other continent...Sent one expeditionary force over to see it wiped out in 3 turns and decided to leave well alone.

Then towards the end of the game Shaka started vassalising his neighbours one by one. - The world balance shifted from a religious split to a Vassal power split. Shaka supported by Elizabeth and Washington against Peter supported by Qin and Saladin. - I remained Neutral. - Shaka and allies started ripping up the rest of the world. Qin caught the worst of it with Beijing being razed. - All the while I was busy building culture. - Thebes achieved legendary status in 1957. Heliopolis a bit slower in 2005....Then the race against time. - Was Memphis going to make it before the rest of the world turned on me? (By this point I had musketeers fortified in the hill town but facing little hope agaist the Tanks and Mech inf of the warring factions.)

With time running out Memphis finally achieved Legendary in 2040. Phew...that was close.

Final score 2111. - I must stand a good chance for the slowest victory this month.

By the way. Peter's island city never flipped to me even though it was 5 tiles (?) off my second legendary city. - But Qin's northern island city did flip when Qin got a kicking in the south. (A nasty place for a kicking.)
 
I am a builder by nature, and not a consistent winner on Prince, so I was a bit worried about the civ density on a Terra map. Nevertheless, everything worked out nicely and I nabbed my first GOTM win. Here's the story

I started out by grabbing Hinduism for the happiness as my warrior explored southward to find Peter uncomfortably close - so close that I decided a War Chariot rush would be necessary. Boy was I happy to see those horses! I took Moscow and razed St Petersburg before signing peace and building up my empire founding four or five additional cities of my own.

By the time maces came around, ca 1300AD, I realized my empire was not large enough to win by continuing peacefully along. Washington was next in line and the war was going fine until Qin declared on me just as I take the american capital. Making peace with Washington and turning on the Chinese turned into more than I bargained for. Instead of capitulating to me, Qin decided to vassalize himself to Shaka, the leader at that point. With help from Saladin, I manage to keep Shaka at bay.

The industrial and modern era would be spent in near perpetual conflict with Shaka and his vassals Qin and Peter (Peter with only one heavily defended city). Along the line I also took some more of Washingtons land, leading to a capitulation. I succeded in building up a considerable tech lead, virtually ensuring my eventual victory, but what should I go for?

Space ship? The tech pace was too slow, and I doubted I would be able to make it before 2050.

Domination? Only possible by settling the new world, which was completely untouched by any civ. And since I had enough on my hands back home, I decided against it.

Conquest? Possible, most likely by vassalizing everyone else. But since this would most likely be the most popular victory type, I decided it would be more fun to go for the

Diplomatic victory! By ganging up on Shaka, I managed to stay Pleased or Friendly with both Saladin and Liz for the entire game. After eliminating Peter, reducing Qin to an island nation, and taking two or three Zulu cities, I won the first election with a healthy margin.

Finish date: 1944 AD. Final score: 9916

In summary: A fun game, even though it could be classified as an "easy" Prince game. I probably could have/should have won by conquest a lot earlier - in the end I just enjoy empire building too much...
 
Well, just finished my first cultural victory in 1888.

Final score of 8293 which I'm very pleased with.
I ended up with 9 cities, and eventually 4 religions in all of them, the monistary equivs in the 3 culture cities.

The main mistakes I made were:
* not pushing islam with I got it until much later,
* Neglicting my military, and then having to fend of saka. It was only getting into nationhood and drafting a rapid of army of musketmen that saved me. After that, I made sure saka could see the large garrison on my borders, and kept bribing him to go after saldin.
 
SimonC – you beat me by 24 years. I achieved cultural victory in 1912. The main thing I did wrongly was forgetting that I needed 75,000 culture points on this map setting. I’d been playing different maps and speeds for HoF recently and thought I only had to get 50,000 points. So I ended up with a massive disparity between my first and third cities. My first city had 96,000 points by the time the third city reached the target. This was very frustrating, but all my own fault for not planning properly.

The only civ I eliminated was Russia, although I did fight sporadic wars with China and Zululand. At one point I had to turn off culture to get cash to fend off an enormous Zulu war party and also run Police State for a while. This, along with not turning off science early enough, so I could get rifleman, also would have set me back 40 years or so.

I have no idea what the new continent looked like because I did not ever explore any further than my own borders. I probably ended up with a few too many cities (14 I think), especially after they started flipping to me.

My final problem was not setting up a really good great artist farm. I only ever produced 3 of them, so if I’d had a couple more, I could have knocked another 20 years or so off the date.

There is still plenty of time left in this game so I bet someone else can beat our cultural dates. I reckon I could get to pre 1800 if I replayed this, and there are culture gurus out there who could probably go pre-1600.
 
Played the game as planned for a Domination Vic. Very rare for me to stick to a plan like that. Vessalled China, America, Zulu and Arabia along the way and left weak England alone. Colonized the frontier and built or captured most of the wonders. On the winning turn, Egypt completed SoL and Kremlin, so I guess no score for that.

Interesting thing happened when I took Yayui in the new world, Major onslaught by the barbs. Instead of getting my highly damaged 5 units killed, evacuated the city with about 8 maces at the door step ready to knock down the door. With 3 more back up units, cannons and granadiers, all the cities were captured within few turns. Never built the FP but were able to research at about 80-100% during the last part of the game.

I tried to milk the game but that did not work. got about 40K points. So, how do you milk this game? I saw points going down all the time after an expansion. Any ideas?
 
After researching Civil Service, I switched civics to Representation and Bureaucracy - in 905 AD. It was around this time that I was ready for my second war of expansion. Qin Shi Huang needed to be pushed east a bit.

I captured Chengdu, but was unsuccessful in clearing Qin Shi Huang from the north-central region. I really needed some cats for this one, and didn't have them. I settled for peace, gaining 220 :gold: for my troubles.

As I was assembling a stack of cats, my attention was drawn back to Peter I, whom I intended to subjugate. In 1184 AD, I declared war. After capturing Rostov (1196 AD) and Novgorod (1340 AD), Peter capitulated. :D I know had a buffer between myself and Shaka.

It just so happens that the turn I made peace w/ Peter I, Qin Shi Huang declared war on me - moved a small stack of units on Chengdu. But now, with a cat-stack, I was able to roll up Qin Shi Huang - capturing Shanghai (1424 AD), Guangzhou (1496 AD), and Nanjing (1535 AD). I really wanted to force Qin Shi Huang to capitulate, but he would not. His island cities were out of reach for now, because I didn't have the transports. In 1538 AD, I settled for peace.

In the late 1500s, I switched my state religion to Confucianism so I could build it's holy temple and reap direct benefits. Elizabeth was still a Jewish state, but Washington oddly had switched to Taoism.

In 1640 AD, I switch civics from Paganism to Organized Religion to take advantage of faster construction of buildings.

I'll post later w/ the discovery of the New World, and some pics.
 
Around the 1700s, I stumble upon the New World, which is dominated by Barbarians. I cannot be the first civ to discover this land, because I was not the first to circumnavigate the globe. But, no trace of rivals can be discerned here.

* 1727 AD - Egypt switches to the following civics: Universal Suffrage, Free Speech, & Free Religion.

Egyptian knights begin to attack the barbarian city of Phrygian in 1730 AD. It is soon captured but lost by a counter attack.

* 1764 AD - Egypt switches to Free Market.

In 1818 AD, Egyptian scientists learn Rocketry - Apollo Program begins. Elizabeth may have had a 10 turn advantage; switch to Bureaucracy for the 50% hammers in the capital; Apollo Program will be completed in 47 turns rather than 65 turns; Egypt signs a Defensive Pact w/ Saladin, later renewed in 1885 AD - remainder of game.

Egyptian forces once again capture Phrygian in 1887 AD. This offensive was supported through an Egyptian settlement built to the south, Frontier City. A foothold is finally secured in the New World. Rival civs have only settled on the surrounding islands. And, they would only ever achieve two small cities on the mainland in the far north.

barb_foothold_1905.jpg


In 1890 AD, Chengdu builds the UN. Ramesses II wins every single election. But, I never attempt a diplomatic victory. Mostly because I don't think it would be decisive. Elizabeth is second in points, but is overtaken by Shaka as Ramesses's political rival. Shaka had Qin Shi Huang as a vassal.

* 1894 AD - Switch civic to Emancipation.

Elizabeth built the Apollo Program in 1919 AD. But, Chengdu's construction of the Space Elevator in 1937 AD helped seal a space race victory. There was very little warring from the mid-game on. The tech tree is completed in 1980, and a space race victory is achieved in 1983.

Title: Ivan the Terrible :mad:

F5_map_wotm09.jpg


victory_conditins_wotm09.jpg


domestic_advisor_wotm09.jpg
 
I decided to go for a cultural win before starting the game. After building two more cities, I attacked Peter and grabbed his three cities. Two of them were located with with lots of grassland tiles, and I decided to use these two together with the capital as legendary cities.

The capital build wonders and due to the mixture of GPP types I got several Great Prophets. I used two of them for shrines and spread judaism and taoism all over the map. This enabled me to run at 100% culture when I switched of research and still have a positive income (several cities were producing wealth).

Due to my tech lead I could bribe Shaka into wars and I was never attacked myself. I was first to circumnavigate and popped Astronomy from a hut over seas :lol: (I popped Metal Casting from the hut on the island to the west of the starting location). I sent two cavalry units to capture a barbarian city to get access to wine (I had health problems in my culture cities). My god, the barbarians struck back and wiped me off the continent real quick :cry:

Several cities flipped to me, and I settled the islands to the north and far north east, so I ended up with more than nine cities. I was friendly/pleased with everyone in the second stage of the game apart from Elizabeth, who I declared on four times and captured a city with buddhism. I spread my sixth religion although it was too late to have any real effect on the end date.

I bought a lot of buildings but not early enough. In my previous cultural victory I was running less than 100% culture and I didn't want to risk that.

Thanks Gyathaar and the rest of the W/GOTM team for the map :hatsoff: . I wonder if it was on purpose that our starting position was isolated in such a way that it was easy to fogbust. IMHO the raging barbarians made this game easier since the AI was delayed quite a lot.
 
Erkon, you nailed the rest of us culturally this time. You beat me by almost 200 years! Not sure what I could have done to shave 200 years off my finishing date, though.
 
Diplomatic Victory in 1888. Only a few turns from domination.

I planned to expand with settlers and by the sword until I could start colonizing the new world. When the new world was occupied I would return my focus to dominating the remainder of the old world.

I easily disposed of Peter very early in the game. I took most of Qin's cities and left him with a couple of island cities.

I explored with caravels, circumnavigated the world, and horded Astronomy. I established a beach head city in the new world in the "Oregon" area. From there, a combo of conquest and settling occupied the entire new world except for one island. I set the new world with the goal of self defense, filling our coffers and constructing the spaceship. I had other plans for the old world.

Along the way I build the Great Library, Great Lighthouse, Colosus, Taj Majal, and Statue of Liberty. The new world got the Forbidden Palace, but I missed Versailles.

I started building military. Before I was ready, Shaka attacked America, so I joined in. I settled where Shaka razed cities and conquered all the rest, save one, which Shaka kept. It was smothered by my culture and down to one tile in short order. America became my vassel. I built the rest of my army and used artillery, infantry and tanks to eliminate Salidin. I forgot that he was vassel to Shaka, so I had to fight him, too. Salidin wasn't particularly strong, but Shaka had hordes of cavalry. I'm not much of a warrior, but it was pretty fun to work my way through this mess.

Along the way, I build the Pentagon and the UN. With 61% of the land, 4 cities about to come out of anarchy and the warring over, I could chose to vote myself a diplomatic victory, wait for culture to expand for a domination victory, or mellow out and finish the spaceship.

I voted myself a victory in 1888.
 
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