WOTM 27 Final Spoiler

[leif erikson]

WOTM 27 Final Spoiler

Reading Requirements

Stop! If you are participating in WOTM 27, then you MUST NOT read this thread unless

• You have submitted your entry

Please note: we think there is a bug in World Builder that maintains total number of turns despite changes in game speed. This means that your game is being played at Normal speed while the number of turns is for Epic speed. (660 versus 460).

We have not tested it but we think it likely that the game will play beyond 2050 AD.

Feedback on the game concept and map are welcome. Hope you enjoyed your game.

 

[kcd_swede]

Kind of lackluster finish date for me, but maybe some blame on the depleted world for that. More blame on my slow expansion though.

I figured the conditions would make space race the most challenging to do well, so I tried that out to enjoy full effects of no resources throughout the whole game. Decided cottage economy would be best.

I settled Washington on a flood plain to get 5 or six floodplain cottages and lots of river tiles. Plenty of forests nearby for chopping. New York took up the rest of the floodplains in the southeast (another 4 or five). Probably should have saved that for a third city because early production suffered from working all my cottages.

Tech path: Wheel>Pottery>Mining>BW (revolt to slavery)>Writing>Mathematics

First build was worker, improvement was cottages. Then chop in checkerboard pattern (to maximize probability of forest regrowth) to build stuff. With the whip being used (graneries/libraries) when pop maxes out.

Teched Med>PH>CoL and had to wait for Oracle to be finished to complete the CS sling. Probably could have teched CS in the same amount of time... early mature cottages are THAT powerful. Knew health would be an issue so did an aqueduct/Hanging Gardens soon after(t100). I immediately began the GLib because world wonders are like that... once you get going, its hard to stop.

Cats were too expensive without mines (and not effective enough against LB's) to make early warring efficient at all. I got convinced of this when my first catapult died attacking a barb city with 0 culture and 2 archers and damaged them to only 2.6 strength and my archer support lost battles causing no damage.

Besides... I hate whipping away my cottage-work-force. Ugh.

I gave peace a chance... until rifles (via Liberalism) came along, and then quickly took HC's 5 best cities and vassalized him (1515AD). Only took two of Wangs cities before he capitulated, and should have taken more but would have required too many turns to get enough units to the front. Went to war with Mehmed at Churchies request, took one city and then accepted one more for captiulation (before he could capitulate to Churchill!). Then decided the four easily reachable French cities would be nice to have before I vassalize him too. Too easy with highly promoted Infantry against rifles. Again, a more efficient space race would be to have finished the wars early in the game... but the production possibilities (and my choice of taking wonders instead) doomed that prospect. The last war ended 1828AD (could have taken vassal 15 turns sooner but wanted to get Paris' production and commerce).

The Good:
CS-sling via Oracle t79 (900BC)
Academy 775BC
Hanging Gardens 375BC
"Early" Rep Parts (1160AD) to make lumbermill production to leapfrog the AI.
Got all the "free" stuff for first to tech (except 4 bhudism, hindu, christainity, judiasm, and Islam).
Rifling from Liberalism after which I had some quick and easy wars against LB's. Could have saved Liberalism for a much higher beaker tech but realized needed more than just 6 cities ASAP!
Used all GG's for Military academies to spur production of units.
Lots of wooden space parts by converting lumbermills to workshops.
Extorted the heck out of every AI on the planet... I usually don't do it much... but this time it was just like taking candy from a baby.

The less good:
Monarchy (HR) delayed too long preventing vertical growth (t107).
Rush to get wonders slowed horizontal expansion (5 cities at 25AD, 5 cities at 1000AD, 6th and final settled city settled 1070AD!!!)
Delayed metalcasting to 780AD whose forges really helped once I got them.
Late adopting religion for Org Relig build bonus, due to diplo concerns (which I should not have worried about at all).
Didn't realize you can build artillery without iron, so relied on Trebs to help my infantry.
No useful techs could ever be traded for. Ended up selling lots to keep cash up.
Took wars too late in game to be profitable for fast space.
Waited too long to go to State Property and workshop the place - didn't realize that the city maint cost dropping would pay for itself in research.
Taking vassals has heft happy penalty on new cities... but saves many turns from war. Not sure I made best choice in each case.

Unecessary crap I built:
Taj Mahal - nice, but 28 turns? c'mon, nothings worth that.
Versailles? Should have State Propertied instead.
Broadway - needed the happy faces
Rock and Roll - see above

Questionable builds:
Three Gorges (with 1 GE and much wood).
Space elevator (with 2 GE's so not so long).
8 Laboratories (at least 2 too many).
Forb Palace built in city that could build it in reasonable number of turns rather than in best location to minimize maintenance.

I think that the game set-up really sinks the space race by having no resources. Probably affects UN games also by having little to trade early on... but no railroads and no powerplants (until plastics) and no aluminum really hurts a spacer (not to mention diverting commerce to happiness instead of beakers like you want, plus the drag of unhealth taking all the food and limiting growth). No Ironworks! I was able to get Fusion in 5 turns of research, but building even the lowliest ss part took 7 turns.

So to expereince the full pain, one should try a space race. My time could have been much better by delaying my wonders in favor of more city settling early on... its not as if the AI were anywhere's near the tech needed or anything. Doubt I could get it done before 1900AD on Noble level with this set-up, though (but I'm sure others can and will). I should have taken the challenger save to make the global tech rate faster (I am sure the space race winner will have done so). Oh well... it was very fun trying to adapt to this world. And one of these days I'll actually do a test game to get a feel for what works and what doesn't before I play the actual WOTM. Some day. (Yeah... right... some day)

End stats: 19 cities, (6 settled, 11 captured, 2 taken as peace offerings, 1 razed).
HC, Wang, Mehmed, and Louis vassalized. Monte and Churchy not... or else I'd have busted the domination limits, ofc. About 70% of world's pop. Base score 5200 or so, final score 52000 or so. 6.5 hrs played.

No great prizes this time... but I got something even better: A LOT of fun.

Thanks for the creative scenario!

 

[leif erikson]

Nice write up!

A bit of Wonderlust?
I was a bit surprised you found Cats to be ineffective. It will be interesting to hear what others experienced. In testing, I loved those Cats... but I was not headed for space.

Glad you enjoyed yourself. Best wishes for a

 

[narri]

Got domination in 1775, 96k points. Interesting game this was. Would have been even more interesting in BtS where all those trees shout "National Park please" .

Good:
Feudalism slingshot 925BC.
Get Communism from Liberalism in 1525, which helps the final push out.
Never under any serious threat at all after the Feud slingshot.
Made friends with Korea (who could have actually been the most dangerous enemy with Hwachas that close to me).

Bad:
I don't actually get aggressive with the early feudalism, opting instead for defense and more cities.
Started automating workers around 1500 instead of taking my time like a good player.
NOT ENOUGH TREBS. Attacks with grens stalled as everyone had good culture defense and I ran out of trebs.
Start moving towards getting Steel from Lib only to realize as I got to Chem that Cannons need Iron . Artillery is way too far out to be useful for Dom.
Should have split the island of floodplains between two cities. Health hit pretty bad.


Commentary:
Come on, you could have put Monty right next to me and make this a lot tougher. HC becomes obsolete right away and Korea takes too long to get to Hwachas. Mehmet was in a good spot to be tough as I got there as he got Janissaries. I was wondering if Gandhi would have been put in on the other side of the world as the culture-monger to make peaceful victories tougher (as Fast Workers really shine in a forested world!).

 

[leif erikson]

Got domination in 1775, 96k points. Interesting game this was. Would have been even more interesting in BtS where all those trees shout "National Park please" .

Congratulations on your win. I agree that might be more interesting, especially since bombard units cannot kill in and there are more options.

Commentary:
Come on, you could have put Monty right next to me and make this a lot tougher. HC becomes obsolete right away and Korea takes too long to get to Hwachas. Mehmet was in a good spot to be tough as I got there as he got Janissaries. I was wondering if Gandhi would have been put in on the other side of the world as the culture-monger to make peaceful victories tougher (as Fast Workers really shine in a forested world!).

for the feedback.

In testing, I had placed Montie closer and was able to rush him before he could get his UU. I may have moved him too far away.

Glad you found it interesting.

 

[kcd_swede]

Nice write up!

A bit of Wonderlust?
I was a bit surprised you found Cats to be ineffective. It will be interesting to hear what others experienced. In testing, I loved those Cats... but I was not headed for space.

Glad you enjoyed yourself. Best wishes for a

I think if you are intent on a military VC, cats should be very effective because you build enough of them. They aren't very strong by themself, though, so you need a lot of them and must replenish. When I got cats early (which I aimed for, actually) I had only 4 or 5 cities, two of which cottaged up and building infrastr... (ok...wonders). That left 2-3 cities to whip/chop units from (plus granary or library on way to Oxford, ya know...) with too little food, too few happy faces from resources to be really effective (even with HR, that's a lot of units just to keep the happyness).

So when I had bad RNG on attack against barb city, I decided not to shift my whole civ over to military economy to expand early. If I had more confidence in my whipping and warring skills I might have made a different decision there. For me, it did not seem very efficient to spend a lot of turns idling my research machine just to take over some fairly immature AI cities (I had lots of room to expand peacefully, I just never got around to it ). I was thinking... By the time I get rifles, the number of units needed would be far fewer, I'd have lumbermills and forges, and the cities and their cottages will be far more lucrative to take. This turned out to be correct, but I could sure have made those good cities even better if they were in my hands sooner.

These kinds of strategic decision is what make the game great... but I should probably experiment more with radically different aproaches. Who knows, maybe the folks who best me in this space race will write it up and I learn new tricks the less painful way.

 

[cas]

Tried asap warrior builds to rush, but found the two closest targets were Inca and Korea...I think Korea had BW/slavery first tech and both founded a religion. Inca also had archers by the time I got there. No chance of a medal at that point...any player starting with pottery/cottages would have too much of a lead on my game.

Played stupid and reckless from there. Beelined construciton with Oracle. Razed every city I captured and constantly built military, especially siege which are insanely overpowered in this scenario. Rolled over everyone with cats/trebs and eventually artillery. Had to build a 2nd city toward the end to take out France which settled the island to the SE...needed a galley.

Delayed the win until 2048AD. Maybe I can get a shield for my time.

cas

 

[Conquistador 63]

I figured the conditions would make space race the most challenging to do well, so I tried that out to enjoy full effects of no resources throughout the whole game.

Good point. I, on the other hand, as Xmas was already over, decided to take advantage of all those to build a huge wooden catapult army.

I was a bit surprised you found Cats to be ineffective. It will be interesting to hear what others experienced. In testing, I loved those Cats... but I was not headed for space.

They worked well for me also. I'm a lousy warmonger but was able to finish Louis (200AD), Churchill (940AD), Capac (1000AD), Mehmed (1100AD) and vassalize Wang (1140AD), to achieve a domination win in 1160AD for some 150k final score. I built a bunch of Musketmen from 800AD until the end, but those were mainly for catapult protection. I did not face Lbows before the 1100's, but by then I had huge numbers of cats.
p.s. the early wonder I built was the great wall - nice not worrying about barb defense in a huge empire

Thanks for the game, leif!

 

[SteelHorse]

Pretty much the same as C63 but no where near as impressive finish date and needed the Trebs for the LBs.

Beeline Construction - completed 900BC.
Cranked out the Cats.
DoW on Wang 350 BC - eliminate 0AD.
Oracle for Engineering in 50AD - start on Trebs (perhaps a few more cats instead would have helped the finish time).
DoW on HC 75AD - eliminate 620AD.
Hagia in 780AD - for worker efficieny. Probably kept too many
cities and needed get farms and cottages.
DoW on Louis 780AD - eliminated 1170AD
DoW on Churchill 1210AD - vasal 1340AD
DoW on Montezuma 1390AD - vasal 1595AD
Great Lib in 1440AD - just trying for more wonder/tech points while marching the Trebs/Cats around.
DoW on Mehmed 1520AD - vasal 1595AD
Conquest Victory 1600AD.

Ditto on the game - very good, leif. It was very different - a minimalist game.

 

[Fluroscent]

Settled in place. Plan is conquest via catapults only.

Four cities built while teching to construction. Chopped settlers and a bunch of workers to chop even more. Cottaged NY (on FP delta) to keep economy in check/get construction a bit faster. Built only granaries+barracks+catapults in most cities, using the whip and chops to produce the vast majority of hammers. Later some monuments, particularly in the 5-6 captured cities I kept. No other buildings until all the needed catapults were built.

Tech path: Mining-BW-Wheel-Pottery-Writing-Math-Construction. Achieved construction around 1000BC (didnt make a note). Afterwards I beelined Feud, but slowly, to make sure to keep enough gold to avoid strike.

HC+Wang+Churchill dead before 1AD. Should have saved Wang for last so my late catapults had a chance to join the war.
Got Feud 375AD to cap Monty+Mehmed and save some 10 turns killing their last cities.
Conquest Victory achieved in 400AD, score 70kish (absolutely no effort to increase this)

Interesting setup, but in all honesty, the difficulty level felt even lower than reqular noble, due to the AI not knowing how to mass chop. Exp/Cha is probably close to optimal for this game too.

 

[adrianj]

WOTM27 Spoiler - Contender Save (NB - written in the present tense, since I wrote this log while playing)

I am very interested in the challenge of this map. After much thought I've decided I want to pursue Domination ASAP. My plan for this is many many catapults which should hopefully only be facing archers, and longbows at worst.

My initial thoughts are that most production will come from forests and whipping. I'll only tech as far as Construction and Currency and maybe Feudalism. Useful wonders would be Stonehenge for popping borders (covering land tiles required for domination) and the Great Wall for keeping the barbs out so I can conentrate on early workers and settlers. An early GProphet could be settled for / or maybe bulb Theology if I have a well spread religion and I want extra unit XP from Theocracy. A GE, probably rush Hanging Gardens, more for the instant +1 population in all cities (to be whipped into more catapults) rather than the health bonus.

*** Session 1: 4000 BC -> 2440 BC ***

I settle in place since all the tiles seem pretty equal to me. First techs are Mining -> BW so I can chop and whip, first build is a worker to farm the floodplain. The warrior explores up the river, since the best city sites will have floodplains. It soon turns around and explores in the south direction.

In 3240 BC BW is learnt, time to chop out another worker, warrior and settler. Next techs Wheel -> Pottery.

First settler is produced in 2760 BC, and city #2 is founded in 2600 BC NW up the river - I chose this site first since it has more forest which I want to chop into Stonehenge and the Great Wall.

In 2440 BC I've learnt Mysticism, and city #2 begins building Stonehenge.

*** Session 2: 2440 BC -> 850 BC ***

Next techs Masonry -> Writing -> Maths. I want the Great Wall, and improved chopping.

City #3 is founded in 1840 BC SE down the river in the most obvious high commerce site.

Maths is learned in 1240 BC, and 3 turns later the Great Wall is completed.

City #4 is founded further W on another river.

Construction is learned in 850 BC, and now the real whipping can begin. Alphabet and Currency are next on the list.

*** Session 3: 850 BC -> 425 BC ***

The first war begins with HC in 650 BC. He's a great first target since he is close, not protective, and has nicely improved his lands for me

In 475 BC HC is no more. Next target is Louis.

*** Session 4: 425 BC -> 1 AD BC ***

It's not until around now that I meet Monty. During this session I spend about 200 years moving troops into position around Louis, and building yet more Catapults. In 200 BC I declare.

In 100 BC I've learnt Feudalism, and that completes my teching I think. Time to spam some settlers and fill out my land I think.

Louis is dead in 25 BC. Next targets are Wang Kon and Churchill, probably take on both at the same time.

At 1 AD I have 11 cities, 60 population, 460 at +43/turn, and 27 catapults.

*** Session 5: 1 AD -> 500 AD ***

In 150 AD I declare on Wang Kon - he is dead in 250 AD.

In 275 AD I declare on Churchill. By 500 AD he is still alive, but down to only a couple of cities. At this point I have 28 cities (41% land) and 97 population (66%). I'm a few turns away from researching Drama at 0%, 1257 in the bank, losing 26 /turn.

*** Seesion 6: 500 AD -> 720 AD ***

When Churchill is down to 1 city I take his capitulation, because I hadn't brought enough catapults along, and it means I can work on Mehmed sooner.

I declare on Mehmed in 580 AD - he is dead in 680 AD. All that's left now is to settle the last few cities and turn the culture slider up for some border expansions.

In 720 AD, Washington has won a Domination Victory. Final score of 184599. That's a personal best for me

*** Summary ***

Final number of cities something like 43, population of 148. Overall, a very fun game for me, since I'm typically never this aggressive! I didn't have anything to do with Monty at all in the end - he had some jaguar warriors but by that stage my power rating was something like 3x his.

This game would have been completely different in BtS - since I exploited the catapult's ability to kill relentlessly. The Great Wall proved to be an immensely useful wonder - I didn't have to fogbust at all, and most of my cities went without any form of protection at all. Although Mehmed did raze one city towards then end after I declared on him and realised he had a warrior two tiles from a northern tundra city

 

[The-Hawk]

I decided to go for space... I figured military victory would not really provide the opportunity to enjoy the unique map.

Launched in 1927. I did not time my end game very well (finished all necessary research before I'd even finished Apollo ). Since I assumed it that production would be the long tent in the pole, I aimed for the Three Gorges and Space Elevator first to ensure I had power and the prod benefit. However, I ended up waiting a while for Apollo, should have headed there sooner. Once Apollo was completed, I started a GA. All 13 spaceship parts were built simultaneously within 8 turns. Base score was 5540, maybe the slow time will earn a cow .

Leif, well done . Great gotm concept, was quite interesting to play.

 

[PutCashIn]

Maggotty Poos, I was going for a time 'win,' but clicked on 'diplomatic victory' without realising that in warlords you could vote yourself the winner.

The uploader is also giving me grief, so sorry if theres 14 submissions, its all the same file. I got clicky when IE stalled. (but theres an email reply in my inbox so I guess one must have made it through)

The AI *really* likes to build farms, yeah?

And "long tent in the pole" is my new saying for the week.

 

[Holy Cheese]

Domination victory 1965AD.

Teched through to get feudalism as soon as possible, then built an army of cats and longbows and started warring. Took Louis down first as he was closest in power, followed by Mehmet, Huayna Capac and Wang Kon. Victory came while I was fighting with Churchill.

I went for an inner ring of cottages and/or farms in the BFC and put lumbermills into all the other tiles for production and food.

my biggest problem was war weariness and I should have teched Fascism for Police State, but never got round to it until right at the end.

Militarily I was always ahead of the rest and always had superior units to the AI. By the time Churchill got his redcoats I already had infantry and artillery and was just starting to pump out navy seals.

Thanks for an interesting game!
Jack

 

[MacBalt]

Wow, more impressive finish dates in this game. I got conquest in 1500 with the challenger save, but that seems very slow next to dates around 500 to 1000 AD. (Kudos to Conquistador63, Fluroscent, & Adrianj! ) Went with catapults but had to face longbows in my last three opponents and that slowed things down considerably. Should have chopped more and quicker too, apparently. Thanks for the interesting challenge Leif!

 

[Deckhand]

1925 Domination.
Feudalism from Oracle in 900 BC.
Rifling from Liberalism in 1565.
then lost GM Economics race because I switched lost a few turns to a civics switch.
Was rolling over Huayna when HC vassalized to my buddy Louis - suddenly Incans have rifles and grenadiers. Slowed my conquest.
Lots of war weariness - realized it was partially from the lack of happiness resources.
First took over Koreans, then Incans, then vassalized English, Aztecs and French.

 

[orb]

I must be on track for the lowest scoring Domination win in this game. - 2050AD for 6K points (I think)

Decided to play for a conquest and everything started as per the plan. - My assault longbows took out WK who conveniently build the Pyramids just in time for me to capture...then switch to Police State.

My Muskets/cats took out France and and half of the Incans, my Rifles/Gren/Trebs finished off the Incans.

Then when warring on Mehmed, and capturing Istanbul, he vassaled to Churchill and suddenly I had the longest front line in the world. - A good lesson for me....Dont attack Redcoats with Grenadiers. - The are just not Riflemen.

The war with the English then dragged on with them having the tech lead. -A slow advance was ground out. - It all came down to the fact that I had more Infantry and Artillery than Churchill had.

What started out as a Conquest game then became a Domination game as time rolled on.- With less than 100 turns to go I backstabbed my ally Monte, took his southern cities to get to 50% land then he vassaled to me to get me to 58% land....And a joint war on Mehmed/Churchill got me the last few cities + all important area. - The last city to fall was the English religious city of York. - Capturing this city allowed my border to spring forward triggering the Domination win.


Took me a lonnnnnng, lonnnnnnng time to play this game.- The lack of resources was an interesting challenge, which I would have probably failed had the game been played at a higher level.....Must practice more Conquests.

 

[The-Hawk]

And "long tent in the pole" is my new saying for the week.

Whoops!!!

 

[RobertTheBruce]

I also have a 400AD conquest victory. I followed a slightly different path than flourescent. - I researched Mining - BW - wheel - pottery - writing - masonry - myst - meditation - priesthood - math (lightbulb) - construction (Oracle) in about 1300BC.

I only built 3 cities, granaries, barracks, one library plus Stonehenge and the Oracle. The rest of the game was catapult rush. My established cities pumped workers (no trees left after worker chops, two wonders, and an initial stack) and massive catapult chops in captured cities. I was running -60gpt at 0% research and never got close to Feudalism so I had to walk to the western edge of the continent to capture the last cities. I did get a huge (~170k) score by keeping cities. HC, WK, and Churchill were gone by 0AD and no one had a chance against massed catapults.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Finished conquering in 500AD, as reported in earlier spoiler, and tried to maximize the score. Easy game to do that with warriors available indefinitely for happiness, lots of grassland tiles to chop and then farm, and plenty of unsettled Taiga (and the southern equivalent) to keep land area below the 64% limit.

This would have been a good game to award medals strictly on speed. Victory strategies requiring advanced development and large cities were somewhat frustrated by the map conditions that made commerce hard to produce and building difficult once forests were depleted. Wish the administrators would consider that option, at least on occasion.