Novice Game 4 Discussion Thread

[RobWorham]

Novice League Game 4 has closed for submissions. Please feel free to discuss your game in as much detail as you want. The more we talk, the more we can learn from each others successes and failures......

Zed64 tops the scoreboard again, but we have two newcomers taking the other podium spots........

The top three :

1st : zed64 - Won Conquest Victory - 1935AD - 5519 points / 25203 points

2nd : yagamann24 : Won Space Race Victory - 2011AD - 4850 points / 7878 points
3rd : LaTuFu : Won a Diplomatic Victory - 2026AD - 5561 points / 7500 points

The rest :

gbo : Lost to Cultural - 2028AD - 2845 points / 3431 points - LOST
Makahlua : Lost to Conquest - 1640AD - 621 points / 5143 points - LOST

Congratulations to all!!!

[LaTuFu]

Wow! Surprised to find myself placing for this one. I had a couple of gaffes in early game, and I really thought it would put me behind. I was able to make up for it in the long run, but it slowed me down.

Chalk it up to stupidity or bravado, not sure which. I was trying to settle my third or fourth city. I had explored enough to realize that the iron and copper resources were scarce on this map. I made a run for the lone iron site near me, it was down south near Isabella and Joao (If I am remembering right. I have my head buried in #5, so I might get some players backwards.) Oops. Did I say run? I mean I had a settler do a naked sprint for it. 2 steps out of my boundaries, a barbarian was more than happy to eat them for lunch. Doh!

By the time my next settler (and escort) were able to get down there, I had to settle my city on top of the iron in order to get it, as Joao had settle next to it already and was about to claim it for himself.

After that, I settled in and tried to build up my economy and fill out my cities. I had explored the continent pretty well in the early game, so I realized that I would probably need to grab city sites further out first, then "backfill" behind them to complete my territory. I developed a pretty good perimeter of cities, then kept closed borders with everyone until I could establish my cities.

My first war was with Joao, he declared it on me, a little before I was ready to wage full scale war, but I was ahead of him in tech, so I was able to fend him off initially, and then quickly grabbed a couple of his cities for myself. Isabella decided to get in on the action, so I quickly made peace with J and turned my efforts to her. I had intended to fight J to capitulation, but I wasn't sure I could handle a war on two fronts. I had also taken his best cities, so he would struggle to recover for quite a while. At this point in the game, I intended to go for a domination victory, so I wanted to keep him in my back pocket.

Brennus was to the west, far behind in tech and resources thanks to my strategic city grabs. I gambled and gave him a fistful of techs to get him into the war with Isabella. With her attention divided, I planned to do the war of attrition thing. She never got any of my cities, and I was never really threatened by her. But I was nervous that there was a stack of frigates galleons or something with my name on them, so I made peace with her without ever really making a dent in her. In the meantime, I had been teching towards naval supremacy, so I was the first to compass and astronomy. I discovered the world was round and quickly began settling the other continent. I took the best sites I could find, filled them in with the barbarian cities I took over, and pretty much had 1/2 to 3/4 of the continent before the others jumped into the action. I thought about colonizing, but instead opted for State Property and a huge civ. At this point, my economy was working well, I had good income, a strong navy and decent military. Joao decided he wanted to be my vassal, and shortly after that, so did the Egyptians. Isabella then came after us again. At this point it was the early 1950s, and I realized I was nowhere near any victory objective because I had gone back and forth on how I wanted to win.

Someone else built the UN, but I was quickly SG due to numbers. I began pressing for the diplo after that. I wound up a few votes short the first few times, because Isabella kept abstaining from the vote. I was attacking her from two fronts now, and had air and naval superiority. I simply rolled through her cities continuously until I had enough votes to claim diplomatic. Doesn't sound all that diplomatic, I guess.

If I had not flipped back and forth a couple of times, I might have been able to win a different victory, or achieved diplomatic sooner.

I enjoyed this game, however. I am getting better at specializing my cities, although I need to work on it better. I also focused much more attention on diplomacy, making sure I communicated with the other Civs regularly.

I also had not ever really played a multi-continent game that much before. I enjoyed that aspect of the game much more than I thought I would.

[RobWorham]

Nice write up mate

[zed64]

Once again thanks for creating this game. I had a bit of an advantage in this one due to the fact that I like playing the Indian Civ and that the map was of Terra. I got off to a very good start when the first hut I hit gave me bronze working. I had already started Meditation so I next went for Fishing. I quickly built up my city and expanded to secure my corner of the world. one thing I gained from the forum is that on a map of Terra, you should get to sea going ships and head out for the new world. I set about building a sturdy empire in my starting corner and waited for my ships to arrive. I established a city on the new continent and raced like crazy to gain total control of the continent. I had been building a few Wonders up until now but I now focused on going to an expansion/war preparation footing. I had been lucky so far in that no rival had attacked me and my neighbors were not very strong so arround 1600 I took on Justinian as he was not overly powerful and was on the lower corner...only one front to take care of. My war gained me little except that it gained my forces some experience, however, my expansion in the New World was going great and I now controlled most of it (circa 1850). At this point I realized that not only did I control the continent but I also had control of most of the coal and oil in the game...in fact on the strating continent there was none. I quickly moved my forces to gain control of what little oil and coal I didn't have and cranked the war machine into high gear. I forced Justinian to capitulate and moved on. I next forced Brennus to capitulate and then Hatshepsut I then finished off the remaining two and forced them into capitulation. The key to winning this game from my viewpoint was to realize that on a map of Terra there would be a New World and to get there ASAP. It proved doubly important in this game as almost all the strategic resources were located there. Once I gained control of these, it was an easy win. I was attacking my enemies using bombers and tanks and they were defending with longbowman a few cavalry and very late in the game the occasional anti tank units. The imbalance in strategic resources all but assured a military victory to the first person to control the New World. If this world had not been Terra, I think I may have pursued a Cultural victory given the great starting position and the fact that the Indians can crank out wonders.