WOTM 44 -- Final Spoiler, Game submitted or abandoned

kcd_swede

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WOTM 44 Final Spoiler
How did your game (Franklin D Roosevelt) go?

Reading Requirements
Stop! If you are participating in WOTM 44, then you MUST NOT read this thread unless:
You have submitted your entry or will not submit.

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Please do not post any savegame file from the game. Discussions and screenshots are fine but not actual game saves.

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Did you manage to stay focused on your goal? For me, the land was so sweet I always wanted to plant one more city, the opponents were so weak I always wanted to crush another city, and another world wonder was always just begging to be built... Astro or Edu first... OMG, so many decisions when you don't have to struggle to survive.:lol:
 
As Michael Jackson would say, just beat it!

See if you can beat the mapmaker. I did not submit, and did have some prior map knowledge... but I'm kinda mediocre and unfocused as a player, so you have a chance.

Here is my result: (and the rest of the proof that beating me doesn't make you all that special. :lol:

Domination 1565AD, score 76100.

View attachment 322779

What I did: SIP, CS-sling from Oracle, Pyramids + U of Sankore and tech towards Astro while taking every city on the continent (first get as much trade as possible, which isn't much).

After Astro, use Liberalism to get Mil Trad, and start wiping the other continent from the bottom up (Mansa, Brennus, Hatty, and then Monty). Mansa was already vassal to Brennus, but he later vassaled to me with 1 crap city left. Brennus got to keep most of his stuff because he vassaled easy. Hatty died, because she vassaled to Monty instead of me. Domination triggered as I was rolling up Monty.

Could easily have sped things up by settling all the land on the home continent, and/or not taking vassals. Only reason for vassals is to speed the conquest victory, I think... and I didn't really care conquest or Dom.... I can't submit so it makes no difference either way.

Anyhow... I enjoyed it. And as you can see, its one of my best scoring Warlords games ever... so maybe I should roll for corn/gold starts every time.* :lol:
 
First off, I played this one quickly. It's a fun map and most experienced players should breeze through it.

I envisioned initially shooting for a circa 600AD Dom/Conq victory. I think it might be feasible. However, the last HOF game I hit the 400AD mark on Continents at this level was on Epic which makes earlier finish more feasible.

A few things really affected my date and score significantly for the worse.

1) I completely flurbed a trade with Churchill. Astro beeline was the obvious goal, so Meditation would be ignored. I was hoping for around a 1AD Astro. However, when conducting a trade for what I thought was Poly for Sailing with Church, I somehow clicked Med. Next thing I know I see the Med splash screen pop up and I almost punch my monitor. Thus, I had to bulb Philo on the way to Astro. Bahstahds!

2) Oracle BS. I casually built Oracle (got marble from old Mongol city) to within 1 t and then sat on it for quite some time hoping to take Machinery. Never thought in ages the Noble AIs would finish it early. Literally the turn I planned to actually finish it, Brennus finished. So now I have to tech Machinery as well.

3) This is debatable: I went ahead and took out Church and the Mongols. Mongols went first with little trouble. Church was easy too but he had settled up to 6 cities in a rather haphazard fashion so a lot of moving around. The point here is that I think it might be quicker to let one of the AI live on the continent as a) you get trade routes to boost economy b) you can put more focus in teching fast Astro and getting an army prepared for battle.

4) My coastal cities were mainly on the West coast. I had settled the pigs fish for my NE city with Great Library. I did pump out several GS's there and then used the city to mass whip Galleons. Other coastal cities were rather new and not that effective early on. I did take 1 eastern coastal city from Church (iron/fish due NE), but it was slow to get productive. Anyway, the point here is that the Western path to the other continent was a much longer ride.

So, I think I got Astro around 300AD or so, but then had to build up galleons and more units. Caravels eventually found the AIs and surprisingly Mansa had Feud already so I new I need some units. I missed my window there. Still war was easy, but it was just a matter a getting troops over there. Mansa peace vassaled by my demand. Hatty capped after taking 2 cities. Monty the idiot actually DOW'd on me at Pleased as I was actually sending troops his way. He fell easily. Brennus probably put up the best fight even though he lost all battles.

However, my goal of Conquest while filling out my continent (which I basically did) was stumped by the fact that on Warlords the war weariness is so bad that you have to use the culture slider. However, it makes borders pop quicker and I hit the Dom land limit before I wanted to. I had yet to pull the trigger on capping Brennus as I wanted his holy city and Monty was quite ready to cap with only 2 cities left because he is an insane buffon.

So I ended with a 1300Ad date with around 133K score. IMO it's pretty poor effort for me. I expect some circa 600Ad or lower dates from the pros. Disappointed as it was a strong start for Warlords and a good chance for a nice game.

Basically, I settled in place. Nice cap and great bureau. Expanded to 4 cities (NW for corn and production, West for coastal NE pigs/fish, and south for copper gold) while beelining Construction and sending a stack of Axe/Pults to Kublai.

I attacked the other continent mainly with Mace/cats/trebs/xbows and a few Knights.
 
I was gunning for the fastest diplo again, and I think I am definitely in with a shot.

SIP, good move here, lots of food, and Copper!
Oracle sling CS in 1400bc!
Alpha next to clean up all the crappy techs, the English were very agreeable.
Great Lib, Mids, Parthenon in the bc's.
Caste/Representation fueled economy.
Bulbed my way through Education, Philo, SM & Physics.
Libbed Radio.
Teched MM in 1070ad
GE born in 1090ad :D
UN completed in 1120ad.
Victory in 1180ad.
 
Crappy, crappy domination. The only nice thing about it was that I finished before 1800 AD.
What blowed my game was sloooooooooooow war with Mongols.
Maybe I'll give detailed report later.
 
1600 AD Domination

I decided not to rush early since there was enough land to settle. I pulled off a CS sling, teched machinery and construction (buraeucracy + academy in the capital really helped) and went after Kublai with cats and maces. It was probably an overkill, but better to have too many units than too few. He had been kind enough to build the 'Mids and Great Wall for me (and Stonehenge too, but the stupid thing was already obsolete).

After killing KK off, I regrouped, healed and declared on Winnie. He stood no chance either. I didn't vassalize him because I wanted the entire continent to myself. After teching military tradition and astronomy, I rush-bought a bunch of galleons and cavalry and pretty much roflstomped the other continent. I began with Hatty because she was the strongest and in my game she had vassalized Mansa (I wonder, did he end up vassaled in everyone's game). After capping them both, it was Brennus's turn. The guy just wouldn't cap, no matter what. Luckily, it didn't matter, for just as I was about to conquer his last city, the domination win triggered.

I did beat the mapmaker's score (though, strangely enough, not the date) and this was my best score in WOTM by a big margin, so I'm very happy. Strange game in the sense that the only AI I didn't go to war with was Monty.
 
1600 AD Domination

...I did beat the mapmaker's score (though, strangely enough, not the date) and this was my best score in WOTM by a big margin, so I'm very happy. Strange game in the sense that the only AI I didn't go to war with was Monty.

Did I fail to mention that "Beat the mapmaker" means "Finish at an earlier in-game date than the mapmaker"? No? Well, it must have been obvious then that that is what I meant. Sorry, you lose. :p :joke:

Nice game.:goodjob:
 
Changed my mind rather than go for one city space, I went for normal/multiple city space. SIP, but I wish I'd explored SW as originally thought and settled on one of those southern sugars.

Too slow 1780AD victory. Only had 8 cities at 1AD...didn't expand fast enough. Eventually took over the continent and filled it (mostly).

All those one city games are making my expansion skills rusty. :p

Once I had the whole continent though...I remembered why I hate having 20-30 cities and all that territory. Such a painful and slow trod to victory.

cas
 
Hello! I started playing Warlords again, and in the past (years ago) I played a few of the older Warlords GOTM's here just for fun and practice, and to be able to read the spoiler threads right away as I was playing my game. But when I saw that the current game was Noble, I decided to just play it and see what happened. (I usually play at Prince, and can win most games that I bother to finish.)

So, I am quite a bit rusty. But a conquest win in 1836 I think is respectable for my skill level, even if I did take the shortcut of having all my opponents on the other continent capitulate after only razing a handful of their cities. (I only kept Thebes, because it had two religious shrines and paid for itself.)

I am never good at making multiple stacks and attacking with them, because I'm bad at estimating how big a stack needs to be / what combination of units to use. So I just use one or two huge stacks and slowly steer them around enemy territory. This is part of the reason why I took so long, even with the Capitualtion shortcut. I think if I could manage that more easily and be more economical, I could speed up my wins.

I also thought it was quite funny that after as I was going for Optics after clearing the continent, I realized that for some reason I only had two coastal cities! There were several good sites, but I was too busy warmongering to make them. That delayed my Caravels and Galleons, because I had to take time to build my new coastal cities up to be able to make them.

I also did something I rarely do in other games: after filling out my continent, I realized that I had three or four really good cities to build units in, and the rest were kind of so-so. So, I put a bunch of the other cities on Wealth and Science. That really sped up my tech advancement, and kept me ahead of the other civs. (There's probably better ways to do that, but this worked for me in this game.)

In any case, I'm not quite a Civ noob, but I am quite rusty, so I think I did well. I may play in next months' game, although if it's a higher level I may not do so well. :)
 
From my first spoiler:

At 1 AD, I had 10 cities, 40 pops, 9 of my 10 cities are Confused, 8 workers, 5 warriors, 3 axes, 2 spears, 7 granaries, 5 libraries, 1 monastery, Oracle, 5 half-finished universities, all ancient techs plus Writing, IW, Alpha, Math, Literature, Calendar, CoL, CS, Paper and Education (from Oracle). Bureau, Slavery and Organized Religion. Copper, iron, horses, marble, gold, sugar, corn, pigs, and (almost silk and spice).

So, how did things go after this? Not so well. I had education quite early from the Oracle (475 BC), but I didn't get Oxford finished until 450 AD. It took quite some time to get all six libraries/universities completed. So maybe the Education sling wasn't the best move because it came about 20 to 30 turns before I was ready for it. Self-researching CS and Paper early on delayed getting other key techs I could have used much sooner... Alpha, IW and AH to name a few.

But having it wasn't a bad thing. I'd be interested to hear when others completed Oxford for comparisons sake.

Around 1 AD, I also noticed that I hadn't popped a single great person yet. :blush: Bad boy. With all of the self teching I had to do and with gold and 2 towns in a bureaucratic capital, an early academy would have been quite nice. I finally got my first GS in 275 AD.

Speaking of great people, I didn't manage them well at all. I got GS (275 AD), Music GA (450 AD - used to bulb part of MM), GS (680 AD), GS (900 AD), Physics GS (1070 AD), GS (1100 AD), Econ GM (1240 AD), GS (1270 AD). The second, third, fifth and sixth GSs were all about 33% odds to be a GE but alas, I didn't get one... :cry: Plus, to really tech fast I needed several more early GSs to bulb several of the techs on the Mass Media beeline. As it was, I learned Mass Media in 1210 AD and completed the UN in 1310 AD (10 turns later). A GE could have shaved off 7 or 8 turns. Getting more early GSs could have shaved off many turns from my research. I just didn't focus on them until too late.

I learned Optics in 560 AD with a caravel completed on each coast in 600AD (with a Confused missionary on board each just in case). I think this is quite late when it's critical to meet the AI on the other continent, get the lay of the land, and to start getting plus mods with your intended voting buddies.

When I met the other continent, things were a bit uncertain with Monty, Hatty and Brennus all about the same size. Mansa was small with only 4 cities. I new that I could get him on my side. I decided to go with Hatty too. That way, if the largest civ was either Brennus or Monty, I'd be fine. Of course, I needed Kublai Khan and Churchill from our continent to vote for me too, but I've had 5000 years to butter them up.

So here is where I really screwed up. I had Hatty, Mansa and KK all to Friendly and Churchill to Pleased. I counted pops in cities and Brennus and Monty both had about 73/74 while Hatty had 67. Sweet. I should be able to beat both Brennus and Monty.
Spoiler :


The vote comes up and I'm going against Hatty? WTF? :confused: The results come in...
Spoiler :

and they confirm that I should have been going up against either Monty or Brennus. I counted before the vote and got similar numbers, so I know that city pops didn't change drastically before the vote.

And then the lightbulb came on. Mansa was Hatty's vassal, so I assume that half of his pops counted toward her total which made her the largest civ. I didn't even think about that when I was playing. :blush:

I briefly thought about taking some military action on the other continent to ensure that I'd be going up against my intended opponent but I decided not to due to the logistics of getting a non-existant army loaded onto non-exitant galleons for some ultra fun galleon chain finger aerobics.

At this point, I played about a turn every 15 seconds in an attempt to grow my cities. I gifted up to Biology to Monty and gave him a ton of happy/healthy resources. And about 10 turns later he declared on me. My warrior/archer-protected cities were in trouble. Luckily he landed his troops rather than amphibiously assulting a warrior-defended city. I upgraded, whipped and repelled the attack.

I forgot to mention that that vile Englishman that I stole a worker from hadn't forgotten about it for over 4,000 years and continued to abstain from the vote. Since I had just whipped up a quick army, I decided to whip up a bigger army. If those damn English citizens wouldn't vote for me, they would if I had them under my thumb. So I took all of Churchill's cities... something I should have done eons ago but I figured I could get his votes the nice way so I didn't bother. At least KK stuck by my side... which is a bit ironic when you consider that KK isn't the best partner in most games. :lol:

So I was in speed mode just trying to finish. Grow pops, hit return. Call votes. Not enough. Hit return. Call a vote.... I don't know how many votes I called but I finally won in 1848 AD, 103 turns after completing the UN. :lol: So much for my fastest Diplo game. :p

I could have done a ton of things better than I did. The Education sling was the highlight of this game. It was all downhill from there... :cool:
 

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Victory in 1180ad.

Nicely done, neilmeister. :goodjob: Even if everything went perfectly for me, I would have won in 1380, a mere 20 turns after you... :lol: You showed me how to do it this game.

Great Lib, Mids, Parthenon in the bc's.
Caste/Representation fueled economy.

I'd say this is the key to your crushing me. I never had stone (the only stone on our continent was in Karakorum IIRC), so never even considered the Mids. By the time I researched Literature, I felt like I was close to SM and would obsolete the GLib so I skipped it. Never built the Parthenon or NE and never focused on GPs as I said in my post. Having these three wonders in the BCs plus the Oracle while founding/capturing 10 cities is quite an awesome start!! :goodjob:
 
Hello! I started playing Warlords again, and in the past (years ago) I played a few of the older Warlords GOTM's here just for fun and practice, and to be able to read the spoiler threads right away as I was playing my game. But when I saw that the current game was Noble, I decided to just play it and see what happened. ...

In any case, I'm not quite a Civ noob, but I am quite rusty, so I think I did well. I may play in next months' game, although if it's a higher level I may not do so well. :)

Welcome to the fun, and thanks for telling us about your game. You aren't the only one who is a bit rusty, especially on Warlords games.:crazyeye:
 
Diplo victory 1848, although took a much different path than Mitchum.

I took Churchill out early. I left KK alive with two cities, with the intent of building the UN in the captured city of Ning-hsi (with a GE assist, never got the second GE I was hoping for) and gifting the city back to KK so he would be my opponent.

After I discovered the second continent, I selected Hatty and Mansa as my friends, which made Monty and Brennus my enemies. Plan was to get Hatty and Mansa to vote for me.

First vote I was about 15 votes short. Accordingly, I kept trying to increase my population and also got military together to take some of Monty's cities to give to Hatty to increase her pop. However, I kept coming a few votes short each time because Brennus was at war with Mansa and kept eating his cities and abstaining.

Big setback when Mansa vassalized to Brennus and then Brennus declared war on me, causing Mansa to declare war as well. Why, I don't know. Never even saw one of Brennus' ships (caravels) near my continent until late game. Don't think he ever built any galleons. That took away Mansa as my ally in the diplo vote.

Bottom line was that it took a couple of centuries of voting to get enough votes for the diplo victory, finally making it with two votes to spare in 1848, with Hatty voting for me, KK voting for himself, and everyone else abstaining.
 
Diplo victory 1848, although took a much different path than Mitchum.

Same date. :goodjob: Misery loves company. :D

Getting an AI to vote for you can always be a challenge. At least you picked your opponent in the vote. My opponent changed like the wind.

For me, diplo has always been kind of a crap shoot. A lot depends AI-AI relations, religion distribution, etc. The better players seem to be able to navigate these complex situations and get the needed votes while players like me struggle for 100s of years waiting for the planets to align. :lol:
 
Fun game, if not a bit easy. I figured that since I have no chance at getting any other awards I would try and get a cow :shifty:. I thought that to increase my score I should try and get as high a pop as possible, is that a good way to get a high base score? Anyway when I was busy farming everywhere I decided I might as well build the spaceship, when finished the spaceship automatically launched :mad:. I suppose this is what happens when you only play BtS. So in the end I didn't get to max out my score and I have a really bad spaceship time, because I didn't even try to get the specific techs required and I built the entire thing in the one city. Oh well, we live and we learn.
 
I moved Settler and founded capitol in such way to have 2 Gold mines in a ring.
Mining->TW->AH->BW-Pottery->Mistycism->Writing-Math->HBR
I declared on KK 1080BC, but I had wait for Cats to finish him off. I captured last city at 800AD.
Very late and it was main reason for my late finish date. During war I mustered 32 HAs and lost 19 of them. My first attack on Karakorum was almost successfull, just 1 Archer remained, but next turn there was next Archer and I was unable to finish him. After 2 or 3 such attacks I decided to wait for Cats.
1280 AD LIb->Nationalism. Taj Mahal.
1470 AD I started war with Churchil. 1600 AD he was history.
I had few Galleons prepared. 1650 AD I attacked Hatty and MM. Cavs vs. Longs. Easy.
1720 AD Hatty capitulated. From now on it was fast. I declared on Monty, 1735 AD MM was destroyed, Monty 1775 AD. Brennus was lucky to survive, I had invasion already prepared - 4 Frigates and 4 Galleons.
 
Left for space in 1700...

I settled 1N to get a bit more production (not knowing about the extra sugar in the south) but then got to use those for a second gold city, so it turned out about neutral I think. Game followed a pretty standard space plan for this level and type of map configuration:

-CS-sling
-Pyramid
-Representation+Caste
-Construction... Take continent (I took out England first, then went south.)
-Education... Oxford
-Tech to Assembly line-plastics-computers (labs)-Appolo-Robotics-Fussion-Genetics-Eco.
Economy was specialist style, with farms on green and workshops on brown for production.

Some unique features of this game:

1. I got 3 great engineers fairly early, (all at under 50% odds). Kept them all with the idea to use them on key wonders. Burned one on Oxford and two on Hoover Dam. Wether keeping them for so long was a good or a bad idea, I still dont really know.

2. I built the space elevator! I never do that, but I had so much spare production that I could devote an otherwise useless city to it, and use the engineer from fusion to rush it. This actually ended up saving one turn on my finish date.

3. The AI was just useless in tech. I got bassically nothing from them the entire game (I think I picked up two worker techs in one temporary peace deal). I did not even have to worry about building up a defensive army, because even at the end of the game, most AI did not have astronomy... And this despite me giving them quite a few techs at bargain discount prices... I think the fact that MM was a different religion from the block of the other 3 on the continent slowed down the pace...

And also.... I did what must be a classic mistake by now... Start Golen Age with Taj, and use it to revolt to better economic civics... What do you mean, I am in ANARCHY???? ARRRRGGGGHHH!!
 
Bulbed Astro with 2 GS in 200AD

It took some time to get enough troops to the other continent. :rolleyes:
Declared on Monty 780 AD and moved south from there. :hammer:

Built 35 chariots and 83 HAs (lost 55).
 
1120AD Conquest 144 k points

Hmm, I was hoping you went for Domination or something else this time. :lol:

I submitted my game a while ago so details are hazy, but it was also Conquest: I went Oracle CS then probably Lib>Astro. Finished a few turns too late...1160AD. :(
 
;/ One of the easiest map and I failed with a good score. I finished in 1876 with space race. I lost few turns on pyramids (I built great library earlier etc.), I did late CS Oracle slingshot. too late, I even lost one of early workers and a settler, I was delaying liberalism so much, that I finally lost the race with Mansa xD

I think there wiill be a lot of very early domination and diplo submissions
 
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