WOTM 36 Final Spoiler

[babybluepants]

WOTM 36 Final Spoiler

So how did your game go after 1AD? Please tell everyone and discuss it in this thread, subject to...

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[Holy Cheese]

Afraid Cuteness got viciously gang raped by the Boyz from the Hood, suffered a conquest defeat at the joint hands of Napoleon and Montezuma - was just surprised that Shaka didn't join in the fun!

This was the first time that I have played on Quick speed, and the pace really took me by surprise. That combined with my already poor playing skills lead to my demise after what I thought had been a promising start.

Cheers
Jack

 

[Xcalibrator]

Make that 2. I've quit in 1190 after getting beaten up pretty badly by Monte, with Nappy joining for the fun although he's pretty useless. I managed to take Paris with cats, and another barb city, making 9 cities my highwater mark. Monte DoW'd me right around 1000 AD and so far he's razed all 3 of my formerly French cities; I'm down to 7 total. He's throwing knights and muskets at me now and although I might be able to hold on for quite awhile I know very well how this will end. My best units are war elephants and just recently maces. Engineering is still a few turns away. Somebody overseas got Liberalism in 950 AD.

Yeah, quick speed is really different--you feel like you're doing better than you are! I'd like to try this one again with an earlier rush and/or pure REX with no war (well, as long as possible ). Maybe if I give them enough gifts the bad boys would leave me alone. Good luck to all those who are sticking with it! I bet there will be some heroic epics coming out of this!

 

[dima42]

I played last night. I quit in 1785AD. My peak was 63.4% of land and 47% of population, at about 1700. I had stopped producing units because I assumed I was done playing .

I didn't know that vassals only counted for half of domination stuff, having never tried for a domination victory with vassals before . And I couldn't figure out an easy way to un-vassalize Monty (is there a way to do this?) I may have pulled out a domination victory before Mansa won by space (he had 6 parts left to go), but it really wasn't that fun fighting tanks with very large numbers of cavalry.

Final map attached.

 

[dima42]

By the way, despite not wanting to finish this, I really liked the game concept. Kudos.
I never played quick games before, and I enjoyed it much more than I expected.
Also, nice to see a difficult emperor game -- I thought I was done being challenged on nominally emperor games. Next time don't give us the pig, and it will be basically deity level .

 

[babybluepants]

@dima,
Wow! Hard to believe that's not winnable. From 63.4%, all you'd need is 4-5 tiles, right? Which is razing one city and planting a settler.
I don't know of a way to break out a vassal, as I've never tried to. I know a vassal has the option to break free and DOW the master by refusing a demand, but I'm not sure if Monte would refuse a demand given the massive power disparity.

@Xcalibrator,
No point trying to please the boys here - simply won't work.

 

[dima42]

I agree that it's likely winnable, but it's painful from my current spot (I'm actually down to 62.5% and also a couple percent lower population). I stopped producing units around 1600 when I thought I had a calculated win by 1700. But unfortunately I didn't know how to calculate .

Right now the entire world is at war with me (Mansa vassalized Gandhi, whom I planned to vassalize as my backup plan to victory; unfortunately Gandhi wasn't willing to talk to me yet when I captured his capital, which was a mistake on my part) and my army is dead. I would need to find a way to peace everyone (probably give away some cities), then draft a metric ton of units (only can drop off units once because their navy is destroyers against my galleons ), then take back both the cities I gave away and one more . It would be probably ~30 turns and a lot of very careful army management, neither of which I was/am really up to. I would be fighting with cannons and cavalry against mech infantry (but probably at a ridiculous number advantage).

 

[Xcalibrator]

I played last night. I quit in 1785AD. My peak was 63.4% of land and 47% of population, at about 1700. I had stopped producing units because I assumed I was done playing .

I'd mark that as a win in my book, damn the technicalities! Actually, I'm rather surprised that our gentle mapmaker made it possible to get a Dom win with just the land on our continent--somehow we usually seem to end up just a few tiles short in xOTMs. Perhaps bbp felt some small sense of guilt over giving us such unpleasant neighbors and unconsciously tried to make amends.

 

[babybluepants]

It should be just impossible - I checked. dima captured some Indian cities in the south, it seems.

 

[Xcalibrator]

It should be just impossible - I checked. dima captured some Indian cities in the south, it seems.

Ah, well then, my faith in you is restored. How soft-headed of me to think that a mapmaker could be soft-hearted!

 

[kcd_swede]

SS loss to Mansa.

In 1700, I was just back to tech parity with the west hemisphere... and having all cottage France plus substantial early rex, was by far the largest civ. Should have been straight-forward build and win (of course much resources diverted to keeping Shaka and Monte playing nice).

In fact, I had so many units that when I got arty/inf I decided a quick rout of Aztec would make my victory faster and more secure. WRONG!!!

As soon as I DOW Aztec, Shaka DOW's me. Ooops, they signed a DP back in 1595 that I never noticed, and didn't check for. If I knew I was going againts two at once, I'd have waited for more units. As it was... despite taking Aztec best city and destroying 50% of his army on DOW turn, I lose that city next turn, and have to scramble not to lose more. All those cavs they had end up pillaging all my nice cottages in my best cities... and I am making cash to upgrade to save my but... and the west runs away in tech. End of story.

Just in case I could get domination from our own land (I did not expect this to be the case, but felt like kicking butt anyhow), I got tanks and bombers and rolled up Shaka, and then most of Aztecia before Mansa completes his spaceship.

Oh well... it was funnest at the end where it was already pretty hopeless. Cuteness didn't win the game, but she sure showed the boys a thing or two about kicking butt. 131 killed cavalry and 41 killed cannons in a quick speed game.

Reminder to self: always check diplomacy relations before declaring war.

1895 loss with most of the pop and land...Could be a Green Ambulance game, I suppose. But I think the game described above would probably beat my score if it gets finished.

Are losses eligible for Cow awards? This is first time I lose and am not Dan Quayle (Louis XIV).

 

[cas]

I can't believe I finished this one. 1914AD conquest victory...and only used 115 nukes to do it.

Majority of the playing was 3 weeks ago, so memory is a little foggy. I believe it was Oracle-HBR and then HA rush Nappy. That took longer than expected, but luckily Shaka didn't have any metal and built GW and Pyramids for me, so he was next. Then I mopped up Monty.

The other continent was ahead in tech and outpacing me pretty bad. At this point, I decided on a nuke war.

MM was the first target...because he had the largest tech lead. Took him down to 2 cities and he vassaled to Gandhi, so I razed a couple of Gandhi's cities before the war weariness caught up to me. Cease fire for 10 turns while I built up another arsenal and proceeded to finish off WK. A few turns later, wiped out MM remaining 2 cities and then squished Gandhi.

Couple of thoughts:
1) if the AI had teched fission (nukes) or satellites (SDI) earlier, I probably would have lost. But they kept researching everything else.

2) war weariness was ridiculous...seems like a broken mechanic to me. Even with police state civic and jails everywhere, I had to bump the culture slider to 60-80% just to keep from starving. My troop losses were pretty small, so I'm not sure if the nukes somehow count extra ww.

3) global warming gets very annoying trying to re-improve the land manually.


Will be a while before I try another conquest. So much micro management. Such a long hard slog.

cas

 

[kcd_swede]

HELP!

I see there are only 8 submissions for this WOTM so far. If participation remains so low, I doubt the staff will see much use to continue the WOTM series.

I know this was a tough game (I lost, after all ) but submit anyhow. Even if you don't finish the game by the deadline, submit your incomplete game. Please please please... we Warlords lovers need to show that we are enjoying and appreciating all the work that goes into making them.

Thanks!
kcd_swede (in role as dedicated WOTM participant).

 

[shyuhe]

Loss for me I lost because I was going for a conventional conquest game... I thought you could stop the AI SS launch by capturing the capital but apparently not in warlords??? Gandhi escaped from the planet before I could finish him off Anybody know if warlords treats space ships differently? I know conquering the AI capital in vanilla resets the spaceship.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Late game Domination. I managed to conquer most of my own continent but the other continent was blazing ahead of me in tech.

So, I took the sword to Gandhi... quite literally... I recall capturing one of his Cities with the message "Your Swordsman has destroyed a SAM Infantry."

I was hoping to take his "shiny Wonders" and Holy Cities, eek out some techs for Peace, and then hopefully keep his tech rate slow enough that we'd be able to be future trading partners.

However, 1 turn before I was going to give him Peace, as well as a couple of his Cities back, he Vassalized to Mansa! Gulp! War Weariness was already through the roof--I was losing population points at an 80% Culture Slider and that level of Culture Slider was not even sustainable unless I could keep capturing Cities.


Well, let's just say that thanks to Mansa, my plans got changed drastically. Gandhi had to die or I would simply watch my empire starve from an unendible plague of War Weariness. Of course, Mansa kept up quite an assault, but I had numbers on my side and Mansa hadn't been prepared for war... well... maybe he didn't need to be... it was his Tanks + Infantry + Artillery versus my Grenadiers + Cannons + weaker units.

Anyway, I killed off Gandhi (there went my tech trading plan) and spent the next few hundred years getting my revenge on Mansa. It took ages to take him down, since his Destroyers owned the seas, but eventually, I teched to Destroyers of my own; at that point, it was just a matter of collecting enough Gold and then I was able to sail the seas with armies of 50+ units.

I don't even want to look at the Unit Statistics page... there were so many brave Egyptian souls that gave their lives in the cause of this Domination game, but we did get our revenge on Mansa, killing him on the last turn and tripping Domination.

For fun, I finished off Napoleon and Shaka, who just had marginal Cities remaining, on the last turn, too.

Monte got to live because he'd Vassalized to Wang Kon, while Wang had just received a Great Engineer--I'm pretty sure that he'd just finished teching Fusion. He'd also just completed The UN, so it was high time to claim my Domination Victory before some sort of diplomatic or space-faring trickery could be used to steal victory out from underneath of me.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

2) war weariness was ridiculous...seems like a broken mechanic to me

I forget the specifics, but I'm pretty sure that War Weariness is based on the number of battles fought outside of your Cultural Borders. Presumably, unless there is special coding, Nukes don't necessarily add additional War Weariness directly... however, every AI unit that you kill will add to your War Weariness count (as will every unit that you lose in battle). I don't know if Nukes even count as "dying" when they go off--it could be that you even get 0 War Weariness directly from using the Nuke--but certainly, if the Nuke kills a ton of AI units, then you'll get equivalent War Weariness from killing those AI units as had you used more conventional methods to kill a similar quantity of AI units.

So, blame the AIs for building so many units.

My game didn't see me anywhere close to Fusion--Physics was still out of reach when I finished the game.

 

[Cactus Pete]

l also had problems with untimely capitulations: Monte to Nap and Ghandi to Mansa, which slowed Dom'n considerably (in the 1600s). The second time I was looking out for it, but got no warning.

Really like the Quick speed, though continents widely seperated by so many ocean tiles mitigated some of its positive aspects. Never played it before. Hope it will be used again soon.

 

[psparky]

Retired hurt in 1605.

Played this game before the BOTM I reported on yesterday, so it was my ninth game. I thought the position was hopeless, but I regretted giving up a GOTM a couple of months back, so I took a break. Looked again last night, but sadly no brilliant plan had occurred to me in the meantime, so I retired.

I've got a scrap of paper on my desk listing the most and least peaceful leaders (from a post somewhere on CF). The top three names in the latter category are Monty, Naps and Shaka, so I wasn't expecting a quite life. My second and third cities were both production cities to generate all the units I expected to need, and then it was commerce everywhere. That build order helped in the early game, but eventually contributed to my downfall (I think).

Peace lasted a suprisingly long time, possibly because there were no religions. I then had the opportunity to bulb for Taoism. Seemed like it might be a good idea if I could get the whole continent converted (was it?) so I took it, but didn't convert yet. Nappy declared about now, then Monty a few turns later. Shaka caught my religion and converted, so I followed suit and bribed him to war with Monty. Shaka became my firm friend forever.

Took three French cities including Paris. I think he might have capitulated, but I didn't have the tech to allow this (didn't know I needed it at the time, what a noob). Also took one city from Monty to protect my border city (lots of cottages on the flood plains, which was a devil to defend). This was the pinnacle of the game with 11 cities.

Taoism did spread across the continent, but it didn't prevent Nappy and Monty declaring again around 1400. Shaka wouldn't help this time (citing religion), and I couldn't cope with the war on two fronts. They both got to rifles when I was still a long way off, and that was it.

In the end, I think my demise was mostly due to poor handling of the economy. Not sure if the religion plan worked out or if I would have been better keeping it out as long as possible.

It seems that some GOTM play easier than a standard game at the difficulty level would be, and some play harder. Given the quick speed and tricky setup, I'm thinking this game was very much in the latter category, and now reading a few other reports that certainly seems to be true. It's a bit hard to tell as I've played so few games, but I think I'm about Prince level. Overall then, I'm quite encouraged by this result.

Oh yeah, and my son asks me "Dad, why are you playing as "Cuteness"???"

Thanks to babybluepants and the GOTM team for another exciting game - long may they continue!

 

[kcd_swede]

@Cuteness

I find Warlords to be generally harder than either Vanilla or BtS, but perhaps that is because I don't play it as often. But Quick speed almost always makes the game at least 0.5 to 1.0 levels of difficulty greater... units go obsolete very quickly in comprison to their movement rate, requiring more focus on maintaining technology progress and all that goes with it.

Yes, this was a tougher game. Thanks for sharing! (Misery loves company )

 

[psparky]

And somehow I didn't think telling him "Oh, it's all "baby blue pants" idea" would improve the situation.