[Warlords] WOTM 76 - Final Spoiler, game submitted

[Deckhand]

Tell us about it...

 

[High King J.J.]

I completed the game. I think I won. Not sure how. Not by a military solution. I'm too to remember.

 

[MeowZeDung]

I was performing pretty poorly to be honest, but I was on the loooooong path to victory. Was beginning to create my stack of cannons when Toku DoWed for no reason and with no real military threat heading my way, just a stack of 3-4 grens. It so happens that I had all my workers in the center of the hub, and as my stack moved to meet Toku's, I tucked the workers in a Mongol city. For whatever foolish reason, I thought that an AI couldn't attack my units if they were in another AI's city. Long story short, Toku ignored my stack and killed a ton of workers in one shot. Rage quit.

I just didn't have the heart to slog through the rest of this one, entirely my own fault as the map was fine. I had just forgotten so much about Warlords and this game was a big adjustment. I will be ready for the next WOTM! Submitted this game just to show my support/participation.

 

[lymond]

Man, it is such an adjustment going back to Warlords. I forget about so many things, and the fact that the AIs play like Deity almost on Emperor. Asoka was teching crazy fast.

Expanded on my little hub a bit. Built some wonders. Mids, of course. Not Oracle. Went for Horse Archers, and tried to go for GK before he becomes a nuisance and gets some Keshiks or something. Attacked a deer city of his in the middle, just north of my spoke. Took another one, and then just realized he had ivory and about this time he got the required techs. "Retreat!" Let's see what is going on over in Japan. Toku only had Archers for some reason. He had some metals up there, but had not hooked them up for some reason. I attacked a very nice Tokyo down in the middle part and ventured into his hub. Kyoto was fairly well guarded at first by a lot of archers, so I played musical chairs with his cities to draw archers away from Kyoto. Killed some in the field, and took a couple of satellite cities, then pounced on Kyoto. Had to take a rest for a few turns, so peaced out and declared a bit later to finish his last two cities on the E side of his hub.

Both Asoka and Hatty were teching viciously, especially Asoka. So I settled in to work on Libbing MT. I was on the way through Natio, with Asoka still not having Edu and whatever, when what seemed like two or three turns *poof* he had Libbed Astro.

Well, I finished my way to MT which was plenty to kill off GK quite easily. But by the time I'd geared up to hit Hatty both Asoka and her got Rifling like super quick. This was all around 600AD or so and they were teching lights out. I had intended on going conquest, but switched over to Space by this point. And actually taking more land for that was pointless since with all my land combined with Mongolia/Japan and the Islands had my hitting over 60% of land.

It took me quite some time to even pull ahead of Asoka. He was matching me for a while there and always seemed to tech what I was teching and finishing almost the same turn. Eventually though I passed them by quite satisfactorily and pulled off a few good trades when they actually would trade. Built some later wonders, if for one reason to deal with the unhappiness.

Had the great luck of popping too many Great Artists out of Berlin, but did pull one GE to help with Space Elevator, but should have built it sooner. Wanted another one for TGD. Could have managed space parts better and again got a lot Great Artist that did not pair well with my existing Great Artist, so did not get a well timed Golden Age. Only a GE popped near the end allowed me a few final turns of boosted production. Not a great date, but not bad for me on Warlords, since I don't know what the heck I'm doing.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

The start was generous, with Copper and Horses in the strongly hinted-at Settle In Place option.

Yet, somehow, I couldn't find the time to slot in researching The Wheel for Roading those Resources for quite some time, and started my first Settler at Size 2, planning on building it with the Cow and the GH Mine, but switched from the Mine to a Horse Pasture.

I ended up delaying settling by the Stone for too long, so I missed out on The Great Wall, which is a good Wonder to get in Warlords, as letting an AI get it usually means that AI completing The Pyramids with the resulting Great Engineer (as opposed to a Great Spy in BtS).

Indeed, I had a plan of settling by the Fish and Flood Plains to the east, but Mysticism and Writing were delayed for a while, too, so that City just worked unimproved Flood Plains squares (I also delayed Agriculture) while the capital beelined The Great Lighthouse and later built The Pyramids so that they, too, would not get stolen.

The Great Lighthouse helped with the Commerce issues, but by then, I'd missed the chance to settle at the good City locations in the central hub.

So, I went for early Horse Archers and took Toku's nice City there (likely the same City that lymond talked of getting) and slowly, but surely, took down most of the rest of Toku's empire.

The AIs teched quickly and pulled out Feudalism, so I had to wait for better troops to take down my next AI target. Random Religion spread (each of the other 3 AIs had their own Holy City + State Religion) made me the friend of Hatty, so Asoka became my next target.

Meanwhile, I decided that I'd go for Space, if I could finish the game on time (which I did only by rushing a lot of the turns).

Flash back to the Flood Plains + Fish City--it had hired Scientists whenever it could, but it didn't generate a Great Person until Great Person #9, I believe, with me only finally getting my first Great Scientist for my capital's Academy as Great Person #7 or 8. On the plus side, I'd managed to score several early Great People, which is more important in Warlords than in BtS, since Warlords doesn't have the Corporations option and thus settled Great People have a much longer time to pay off.

I kept Toku alive by gifting him some Cities in poor locations, in case me getting Asoka's territory would have put me over the Domination Land Limit, but I needn't have bothered, as I would have been fine even with those extra Cities.

The end game was mostly about just rushing through the turns as quickly as possible, since I'd only started the game after hearing the call from some of the staff to join in on the fun; I'd still have much more appreciated a 2-month deadline for Warlords, but with a lot of last-minute effort, I made the deadline work.

I did have good Great People management, though, being able to settle a ton of them and still have enough Great People for two Golden Ages near the end of the game.

My end-game tech path was awkward--"I don't need to build The Space Elevator," was my thinking, when it's actually in Warlords where it makes the most sense to build it. I'd forgotten that Robotics was tied to a Spaceship Part. On the plus side, I got Combustion and Plastics out of Hatty in trade, which were pre-requisite techs for Robotics, so my blunder in avoiding those techs didn't hurt me too much, other than the lack of Hammer bonus from an unbuilt Space Elevator (I'd managed the Great People "too well," having just enough Great People for my final Golden Age by using up the Fusion Great Engineer and thus it wasn't available for rush-building the Space Elevator).

Near the end, the AIs were switching into Emancipation (Asoka was dead, but marginalized Toku had become Genghis' Vassal), so I bribed Hatty to go after them, which I just kept pressing End Turn as much as possible. I had to bite the bullet and lose 2 turns to Anarchy by going into Emancipation as the Unhappiness was killing me and I'd been playing under the misguided idea of avoiding building The Eiffel Tower due to not wanting to trip the Domination Land Limit, when, with this map type, I need not have worried and would have mostly just gotten more uncounted water squares in my Cultural Borders. Lacking that Wonder for the extra 2 Happiness and losing 2 more Happiness from Whale (Combustion) and Fur (Plastics) hurt too much and thus Emancipation it was.

A few turns later, Hatty did manage to eliminate Toku. Oddly, she razed all 3 of his Cities, where 2 were Culturally Pressured by me, which was not too surprising, but was surprising was that one of those Cities had housed a couple of obsolete Wonders! She raised Stonehenge, The Temple of Artemis, and The Parthenon! I thought that AIs were coded to never raze Cities with Wonders in them; maybe the Warlords Expansion is more ruthless or maybe obsolete Wonders aren't included in that rule--or, maybe it's just one of those wives' tales that float around the forums until they get refuted or confirmed by a code-diver.

The map was a blast and it was clever to have Toku essentially cut off early rushing possibilities of Hatty or Asoka, giving them time to get Strategic Resources hooked up. Well, maybe skipping The Great Lighthouse and just going hardcore rushing would have worked, but then it would have been cost-prohibitive to keep those far-away captured Cities.

I, too, lost Liberliasm to Asoka. I'd even managed to save the game and start a new session on the turn before he learned it, with me having pre-teched Liberalism to within 1 turn, but I think that the interface change of the F4 TECHS screen in BtS, which makes it more convenient to see which techs an AI can research, was a feature that I'd been relying on. I was so careful to check that Hatty, whom had gone for Paper relatively early, hadn't teched Education that I'd failed to notice Asoka being so close to Liberalism himself. In the end, Asoka traded his Liberalism prize (Printing Press) with Hatty, at which point I got the tech, but the cost was Asoka getting to Riflemen while I was partway through carving up his empire. Ironically, Asoka became even easier to kill, as he barely counter-attacked with his Riflemen who mostly cowered in Cities, leaving my Cavalry, Cats, Trebs, and a few Grenadiers a slow but easy time of wiping Asoka off of the map.

The placement of Ironworks was also tricky--Hatty's capital looked to be the only decent spot on the map, but then I saw that the Grassland squares to the north-east of a Settle In Place capital made for a decent spot. There weren't any Food Resources to go with it, but a City that got settled early enough was able to grow to Size 20 and then switch its Farms to Workshops with the help of a small Worker army. Actually, Size 20 was probably overkill, since there was, I believe, one non-Lighthoused Coast square and probably a Peak, but otherwise it made for a decent poor-man's Ironworks City.

Thanks go out to the staff for yet another fun, yet challenging game!

 

[lymond]

Damn you, Dhoom!

Yeah, I'd actually part teched Lib as well. Asoka just hit a phase where he was teching like a tech per turn. it was insane.

I built IW in the tundra iron/deer city just N of our spoke. Not bad, but maybe not best. Interesting you made that spot work. I actually settled that spot quite late myself..thinking to myself that something should really fill in that land. (Hatty walked through my borders early on t settle a stupid city on the spoke)

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I built IW in the tundra iron/deer city just N of our spoke. Not bad, but maybe not best. Interesting you made that spot work. I actually settled that spot quite late myself..thinking to myself that something should really fill in that land. (Hatty walked through my borders early on t settle a stupid city on the spoke)

Here are screenshots of the Ironworks City and the resulting effect on our capital.

Spoiler :

To be fair, I had some extra Food coming in from all of the early Great Merchants that I'd ended up generating (while actually trying to get a Great Scientist), but if you both swapped the squares between Cities late enough and converted Farms to Workshops in the Ironworks City late enough, the Capital could have just used its excess stored-up Food at a deficit while the Ironworks City stole the Hammer-producing squares at the time when the Ironworks City lost its excess Food from its own Farms becoming Workshops.