WOTM 56 Final Spoiler

[Deckhand]

WOTM 56 Final Spoiler

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..........................................
Did you manage to win an immortal Warlords?
Did you have fun?
Was it easy or hard?
Did you take the battle to the enemy or did you just stay behind your walls and go for a more peaceful victory?

 

[nocho]

I enjoyed this game quite a lot! Obviously the walls helped quite a bit. The mountain walls to have no AI competition for settling our vast central expanses, the great wall to have no barbs messing about in our newly acquired territories. Thanks for stone and masonry! So surely it must've been easier than a regular immortal Warlords game, but still quite pleased with winning it in an apparently decent fashion, that is, domination in 1550AD for 224919 points.

Expanded to 13 cities, including the southern corn/FP site, from which I flipped a barb city 3E. Also flipped another barb city in the north. For a change concentrated quite well on workers (about 20) to improve the lands relatively fast and had essential infra (granary, forge, CH) virtually everywhere relatively soon. Oxford built in 820AD and libbed MT in 860AD. From there in my core built virtually nothing but cossacks, apart from Taj and later some happy buildings. War weariness in Warlords apparently can be tremendous. I had 22 unhappy faces from it at some point!

In 1060AD declared on Hatty who tech wise was the farthest. She was pushed over quite rapidly. Then Saladin, the highest ranking AI got to protective rifles all of sudden, so decided to take him on before he would become too strong, instead of continuing with Wang and Alex as originally intended. The war with Sal was rather bloody, but the sheer weight of my cossack army did him in, and after losing Mecca and Medina he became my vassal. Some healing and fresh troops were enough to eliminate Gandhi. Shaka did me a favour by being bribed by Gandhi, so likely he suicided his tons of melee on the rifles of my protective sidekick Saladin. It took him a while to see the futility of his efforts (i.e. talk) and then he also vassaled. Directed the army back to former Egypt to prepare for a DoW on Korea. Also filled up empty lands with new cities and put new acquisitions on theatres and culture. Probably DoWing Wang wasn't really needed anymore, but did it anyway for fun and to gain some extra tiles. Ulsan cost me a boatload of cossacks, but with the first machineguns and infantry helping out, the Korean counter attack cost Wang even more units. Then hit domination in 1550AD.

Statistics say I built 163 cossacks and lost 91 of them. Nice unit.

 

[Xcalibrator]

I retired in 1500 after vassaling Hattie and her former vassal, Alex. This was a pretty big map and I just don't have the time any more, but the plan was to quickly wipe out Shaka and then squeeze Sal next. I think that I could have reached Domination a little before nocho. Yeah, cossacks are pretty sweet on this map! I didn't get MT until, uh, somewhat later than nocho and I believe it was Gandhi who was first to Lib'ism , by quite a bit. I did manage the Taj, though. Fun game! I think I'll go back and replay to see if I can get a better start, though even if Shaka leaves me alone this time I very much doubt I can do as well as nocho.

Will next time be Deity?

 

[Deckhand]

... This was a pretty big map and I just don't have the time any more, ...

I understand, I've retired so many games because I didn't have time to finish. Thanks for submitting and posting.

But you had until Feb 7.

Will next time be Deity?

No, we don't do Warlords Deity.

 

[Minou]

Managed to lose in 1882AD when Saladin launched the spaceship.

Throughout the game, I worked on getting Saladin and Shaka to Friendly, and planned to build the UN, gift it to an irrelevant AI, and then win with my votes plus those two. My plan did not work - I used a GE on the UN in an icy town with 5-6 forest around it, planning to chop the rest. However, this was not enough hammers and Saladin ended up building the UN before I could finish it.

In 1200AD, I launched a quick war to wipe out Egypt, though Korea joined in a stole one of the good core cities. This put me at #1 in population for the UN plan. In 1400AD, Alexander attacked me for no reason, marching through Korea to fling units to their doom. I shipped a bunch of units north across the small sea and captured a few cities before getting him to capitulate. Unfortunately, having him as a vassal pushed Shaka down to Pleased so I needed to build up relations again through bribing him into a shared war on Korea and switching to Police State (his favorite Civic).

Saladin snatched the UN about 1700AD. Plan B was to conquer enough Korean cities and to win a Diplomatic Victory with my own votes, Shaka's and Alexander's. In 1775AD, I launched a five pronged attack on Korea and captured some cities, but eventually had to declare peace due to War Weariness and falling behind on units (still had Rifles and he started building Infantry). By this time the three eastern AIs were constructing spaceship parts. The second war started in 1850AD after I upgraded all my Rifles to Infantry. I captured the capital and about 70 pop worth of cities fairly quickly.

On the last Diplomatic Victory vote I had 640 of the needed 680 votes. Would have captured 22 pop and 16 pop Korean cities next turn and probably been able to grow the last few points (a few Settlers where ready to be used just in case). Two turns later, Saladin won the space victory. I could have sworn Saladin still needed 3 spaceship parts the turn before, but maybe they finished simultaneously.

Despite the loss, the game was fun and I enjoyed bribing Shaka to attack everyone except me, and watching him join my wars with embarrassing giant stacks of Knights and Trebuchets. After the UN building debacle, I read that a better strategy might have been to gift Mass Media to Korea and hope they built the UN for me.

 

[FiveRings]

1898 Space loss to Hat. Conquered Shaka but Saladin flipped the good cities close to Gandhi who, I thought, had better chances to space-win than Hat. Being afraid that there was no time left, as it was, I started the war with Gandhi sooner than needed and could not take Calcutta for its last four units (of 30-ish). Very inefficient tanks, worse than gunships. After that, it was mainly losing a lot of units and cities to Gandhi's Mechs and waiting to learn who and when will snatch the Space Vic.

A lot of fun, indeed! Thanks, Deckhand!

 

[lymond]

I played this some time ago so I don't remember much detail. Not so steller Culture victory. I did not get good religion spread so only had a couple. Plus, some poor luck on Great Artist pops and definitely some miscalcs at the end that lost me several turns at the end and cost me at least a 17th century win. However, I was under heavy duress.

Quite some turns from the finish, a relatively peaceful game went teets up when Wang decides "Hey, I really don't want you to win this game, so I'll Dow you with my now advanced technology and bribe Mr. Shaka in as well".

I had Cavs/Rifles and Cannons in my arsenal while Wang had Infantry/Sams/Artillery. What worked in my favor and saved the game was the fact that he had to walk his troops very slowly from that southern jungle in the south, while he sent a few troops from North that he'd sent up much earlier I guess. I was able to pick off some units on the way with Cavs moving in and out which slowed him down. However, he was literally on the doorstep of my cap and other L city on the last turn...whew!

Shaka was not much of a problem, I had to use major gold to upgrade old units in a border city to make sure he did not take it. I had to hold that front from the other L city. The war itself and losing gold to upgrade slowed my date some as well since I could not build wealth in all cities (for units) and therefore run full slider constantly.

In hindsight, I should have done a better job of diplo earlier on and keeping these guys off my back, although I did keep Shaka and Gandhi in a fairly long war of attrition. I also should have checked war modes more frequently at the end game without BUG. I just assumed at a certain point the win was a lock, but...oh...that late war threw quite a wrench in my plans and date.

good game setup

buen juego, Nocho!

 

[SteelHorse]

The fun started early when Gandhi declares on T83 while pleased (must have been plotting for a while before) and caught my single warrior defended capital a bit off guard showing up 2 chariots and 6 archers. For Pete's sake - Gandhi of all people. Nearest city was 5 tiles away without a complete road connecting the capital. Needless to say had not hooked up metal as was busy rexing and planned to use warriors for MP. Looked bleak. Figured I needed the ambulance award at some point and only needed to lose 3 cities, so would play it out.

Spoiler :

Surprisingly managed to hold the fort after whipping archers like no tomorrow. But the loss of early rex hammers for defense took it toll. Tried unsuccessfully to Lib Nat hoping for some early Cossacks, but missed by a couple of turns. Had 11 cities at that point and 3 religions. Map was defense friendly so decided to switch direction and head for culture. Managed to just miss a couple of good wonders and had almost no luck popping Artists. Had 3 GSs at one point that I could not do anything with.

But even with all that, ended up with a very late game culture victory with a couple of the AI 1 part away from space. Just goes to show - what I am not sure.

Fun game - nice map for the difficulty level.

 

[The-Hawk]

At the risk of being labeled a complete nutcase, I will report on my game.

My Goal: Win a COW award !!! (yes... really)

My final statistics:

Victory date: 2049 AD

Final Victory type: "Domiquest". I killed the remaining 3 AI's on the last turn and in doing so, blew through the domination limit. So I completed conquest and domination simultaneously. (The victory random number gods decided to call it a conquest.)

Time played: Officially, 78 hours, 33 minutes. I would estimate 10-20 of those hours were passed by me leaving the game running while I was off doing something else. But probably 50-60 hours of real game time.

Final city count: 138 (55 of these captured or founded on the last turn of the game)

Research completed: Future Tech 52

Raw (cow) score: 15,526
Final score: 28,324 Hmmmm.... maybe I can win a shield too!

My Approach:

I spent the early part of the game expanding in our generous walled off region. I focused on REX and getting a research engine going because I knew I had all game to go after the AIs.

The first AI I went after was Hatty. In my game, she was a bit of a research beast and I felt I needed to get rid of her first. Very late for a first war (1525 AD), but as I said, with all the room to REX and knowing I would be playing to 2050, no reason to rush.

Saladin was next most powerful so I went after him next, then Gandhi. The southern lands seemed to be most fertile (to promote high population), so I kept most Hatty, Saladin, and Gandhi cities. I stopped keeping cities when I was about 5% short of the domination limit.

After this, I DOWed on the remaining AI's and pillaged every single tile of their lands to knock them back into the stone age. This way, I would not need to worry about someone launching before I could completely milk the game.

As the game was winding down, I built a ton of MA's and stealth bombers. With 25 turns to go, I DOWed the remaining 3 AIs once again. I mauled whatever stacks they had built, then positioned stacks of MAs by each of their cities. I also positioned 35 settlers in their lands to fill gaps after I captured their cities.

At 2048, I realized I would get my last Future Tech on the next turn and no more. Every single city was at max population, every tile had a farm or a windmill. So I decided to finish the game in 2049 and avoid a Time Victory. In 2049, I captured all 22 cities at once. Unfortunately, even though I captured all of Wang Kong's remaining cities, he left a small patch of phantom culture borders on the map. I could not settle 2 of my settlers because it was still his territory. However, I was able to settle the other 33.

In hindsight, I'm wondering if I would have scored higher if I built less military to capture remaining cities and put those hammers into research. I could have researched several more FTs. However, based on past experience, my thinking was capturing 22 AI cities with high population (and settling 33 cities with 1 pop) would gain more raw score than a handful of extra techs.

So there you have it, and yes, I suppose it was a bit nutty.

Spoiler :

My excuse for this excessive game... I only need to win a cow award to complete my warlords Eptathlon. On the one hand, I figured it would be unlikely people would be trying for a cow and I could get away with a mediocre effort. However, I ultimately decided to follow the spirit of "milking the cow" and played it out to the maximum I could get.

If someone beats this and takes the cow, then my hat is off. Having said that, I reserve the right to call you a bigger nutcase than me.



PS... Deckhand, thanks for the game. I had a blast.

 

[Conquistador 63]

Long, hard-fought and fun game.

Some unfortunate AI-AI diplo issues slowed me a bit but I'm still happy with a 1770AD domination win.

After peaceful BC years, on the early AD's Shaka and later Alex declared war on me, but I was already prepared.

I was 1st to Lib, took Nat on my way to MT around 1000AD. Around 1150AD I upgraded a bunch of mounted units to Cossacks and finally went to war. Hatty capitulated in 1300AD.

For logistic reasons I wanted to go for WK and Alex next, but they had been warring each other, and Alex vassaled to WK the turn before I was going to invade WK. I had to fight both for 20 turns (WK wouldn't vassal earlier because he was afraid of my enemies - i.e. his vassal...). As soon as Alex broke free from WK, both vassaled on the same turn - 1500AD).

Then I moved my troops east while teching up to Artillery. Saladin was next, and the most powerful AI. I declared around 1600AD, but somehow I overlooked the fact he had a defensive pact with Shaka, so I had to fight 2 AIs at once again, and had to deal with Shaka stubborness (because of the def.pact, technically he declared on me, which slows his willingness to talk). Again, Saladin wouldn't vassal because he was afraid of my enemies, until 20 turns had passed and Shaka was willing to cease fire.

After that, there was another 10 turns of war until Shaka vassaled himself. That should probably be enough to reach the land domination threshold, but some of my eastern cities taken from Hatty etc. kept revolting and collapsing their borders, so there was time to declare on Gandhi (who was building some spaceship casings), but after some of the captured cities went out of revolt, victory screen came up. My newly built tanks did not have time to engage battle.

Thanks for the game, Deckhand!

 

[Sleepless]

Domination win 1720 AD..

Perhaps in hindsight I could have shaved a lot of time off if I'd vassaled the AI rather than wiping out Alex and WK. Especially as my cossacks suffered badly against WK's protective rifles.

I did attack Hattie first and left her a few cities as my first vassal. Killed off WK in two wars as I wanted some cannons for the second war. Probably would have been better to do it the other way round as Hattie flipped one of WKs cities from me. Must admit I prefer BTS vassals. Much more useful

Finished off taking most of Sals cities and taking him as my last vassal which with a couple of quickly settled cities put me over the domination limit.

Managed to Lib Mil Trad in 880AD and ended up building 165 cossacks. That with the 70 odd cannons was probably a bit of overkill. Especially the amount I had left at the end..

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Grabbed The Great Wall just in time... I was contemplating building it in my second City but the Barbs forced my hand and they were booted out of my territory when at the gates of my capital.

I played peacefully, only going after the Barbs until Cuirassiers Cossacks. I used Liberalism on Military Tradition... man, I love those units! Cavalry are already over-powered, but these are Cavalry that cannot be stopped by War Elephants, Camel Archers, or even enemy Cavalry.

Saladin thought that he'd be all cool and attack Gandhi, bribing Shaka into the war with him. I quickly put a stop to their shenanigans by declaring war on Saladin. OMG, so many units came at me. I am so glad that I waited for Cossacks. War Weariness was a real pain, but I wanted to stay in Representation instead of switching to Policy State, so I just toughed it out as best as I could.

Saladin got knocked down to 1 City before he Vassalled to Shaka.

Meanwhile, Hatty went after Alex, so I backstabbed a Friendly Hatty. Hatty then Vassalled Alex, so I ended up fighting both of them.

Both of them got knocked down to 1 City each. After Peace, Hatty Vassalled to Wang Kong.

Wang Kong was ahead in tech but would not switch to my State Religion for long enough for me to get him up to Friendly status... and the We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced status had long-ago kicked in.

I think that I had Wang Kong up to 9 or maybe 11 net positive Attitude toward me and he was still Pleased... some AIs are just hard to please.

So, there was no late-game tech-trading, other than grabbing Divine Right from someone late in the game for the extra points. Well, that's not entirely true about no tech-trading... I was trading techs to Gandhi, Wang Kong, and Hatty, but they had nothing to offer me in return.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my Ironworks City (in the centre of the map, along the bottom edge of the map) could build The Space Elevator... there must be some sort of axis rotation, because I was pretty certain that you had to build The Space Elevator at a certain latitude (not too far north, not too far south) and not at a certain longitude.


I definitely liked the generous starting area, even if it did mean wading through several Archer-defended Barb Cities. With the gift of The Great Wall and so many hints for us to build it, the Barb Cities did not prove to be a hindrance but instead were helpful in getting me some more Cities (one went to Hatty, but it was the first of her Cities to fall to my armies when I went to war with her).

Thanks go out to the staff for yet another well-delivered game!


Wow, that's some dedication, The-Hawk! My base score was about half of yours and I was at around 56% Land Area for quite some time.


Good job in hanging in there, SteelHorse, and even pulling out a win after that early bad luck! Nice work!


Oh yeah, I believe that at the end of the game, I had Buddhism (Saladin had founded it, but I'm the one who Shrined it) in every City on the map minus the one that Alex built in the top-left corner that I really could have cared less about. It was neat that there was only 1 source of Whale on the map, but by the time that I could have gone after it, I was getting to the point where the Resource would become obsolete, so I didn't bother.

 

[evil_spock]

I finally managed to get the Warlords expansion, so I decided to give this game a whirl. Got 1370 AD Domination, around 230k points.

Old fashioned recap:

First three Cities: SIP, on marble, on PH to get double fish/rice.
Tech: AH, wheel, mysticism, BW.
Build: Worker, warrior.

Wonders: Great wall 2080 BC, oracle (COL) 1320 BC, pyramids 1120 BC, great library 250 AD.

I started with horse archers, but they seem to be slightly worse in Warlords, and this being immortal level they were only good enough to get one city from Saladin (plus a couple of barb cities). However, horse archers were excellent pillagers and I destroyed most of Sally's improvements and got quite a nice lump of gold from that.

Obviously fast military victory required cossacks here. Got mil. trad. with bulbed liberalism (760 AD).

Attack order: Sally 225 BC/800 AD, Shaka 1010 AD, Gandhi 1130 AD, Hatty 1200 AD, Wang 1300 AD (and Alex during the last turn). Vassalized all but Alex.

Thanks for the game.