June Tournament Results and Spoilers

[Jawa Jocky]

I just wanted to brag about being in 3rd place

[watorrey]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Sounds like the lack of rivers was a bigger deal than I'd hoped it would be. Rivers are definitely nice for science in the early stages of the game. Unfortunately, the map settings I used for this game do not tend to favor their existence, so I figured having good bonus tiles near the starting position was probably good enough.

As JJ said, it was just wierd to play a couple games in a row w/ no rivers.

By the way, I've never even tried to mod my copy of Civ 3. So unless someone came up with a mod that uses downloaded games to infect new game settings, we were definitely playing stock 1.21f.

I didn't really think you edited anything. It was just my frustration talking.

Bill

[Carcajou]

Tenochtitlan: Egyptian Capital in 1902AD

This was a tough game :
1) Rough Terrain with Hlls/Mountains/Tundra
2) No River, only a few Lakes for Irrigation

War with Rome in 600BC for a very early Golden Age.
I made peace in 510BC for 2 Techs.
War again with Rome in 400AD, when asked to leave (defeated in 700AD).

Aztecs declared war in 800AD after my refusal to give contact with Babylon. Peace 5 turns later for unpowder.
Aztecs again declared war in 1250AD after refusing to give Chivalry.
Babylon declared war in 1350AD when asked to leave.
Japan declared war in 1430AD, an Alliance with the Aztecs.

Steam Power in 1435AD, but no Coal on my Island. I rushed in 4 Galleons (12 Cavalry / 4 Musketmen) towards a tiny Aztec Island.

My 3 enemies were having minor invasions on my Island and I got GL Ramsès in 1600AD.

Replaceable Parts in 1625AD, again no Rubber on my Island. Moreover, the AI Civs having Cavalty/Riflemen, it will be more difficult to reach Rubber Island. In the meantime, peace with Babylon for Medicine and Navigation. Magellan in 1685AD and the following turn Theory of Evolution using GL.

Around 1750AD, at last I got Infantry to protect Rubber Town from Aztec/Japanese attacks. Second GL for a 3-Tank Army to support the invasion of the Aztec Empire in 1850AD. I made peace with Japan the same turn for Sanitation.
First and second captured Cities reverted back; I then decided to razed them instead.

In 1900AD, 3rd GL in capturing the Aztec Capital. The following turn, Technochtitlan became the relocated Egyptian Capital.

In 1924AD, I was forced into a war with Japan. I had a MPP with Babylon. That was followed by Anarchy and 25 years in Monarchy.

Finally in 1950AD, in peace with all Civs. Not for long, since Babylon invaded Rubber Island.

In 1982AD, I captured the City of Ur and got GL #4 the next turn in defending the Town. Then something very unusual happened : Great Wonder SETI in 1988AD using GL and, on the very next move, GL #5 (his name was Seti). I used him for a 4-Mech.Inf Army #4.
Of course I had Heroic Epic, Military Academy and Pentagon.

In 1993AD, Uruk reverted back to Babylon and a message said :
Cultural Victory with 1898 points.

P.S. (At CivFanatics my name is Gargouille)

[Carcajou]

Ooppss!!

I forgot my Saved Game.

I think I was very lucky to get 5 Great Leaders.

Very early in the game, I also built FP just South of the Choke Point.

[Theseus]

I haven;t finished, but I just posted about this game in a new thread, "Fun and Games with MA."

Lots of fun. I think it's great people are still using so many different strats. For once, I mostly played builder / settler in this one, although it seems many of the most successful games were played aggressively.

Nathan, any clue on the rest of the settings? Resources distribution was wildly imbalanced, which was interesting.

Q: My GA was triggered by Smith's... anyone understand that?

[nbarclay]

I think I posted everything I did in defining the settings. As for the rest, your guess is as good as mine, maybe better since it's been a couple weeks since I looked at the map. As I recall, the variables that ended up random were temperature, age, and wet/dry. (And, of course, the civs involved, but that's only a mystery until the map is explored.) The tundra in northern Rome was what let me feel safe assuring people they wouldn't be stuck with warm and wet (since some prospective players had expressed concern about the possibility of a game without oil).

I agree that romping over opponents with modern armor is loads of fun. But cavalry can do almost as good a job if you get them early enough, and when I'm out to dominate the world, I tend to get a bit impatient. The down side is, my game didn't last long enough for me to find out about sources of oil, rubber, aluminum, or uranium.

Nathan

[Chemical Ollie]

I am too tired too write much about the game. I did not use a pure strategy but some combination of builder and conqueror. perhaps I return to write more later.

Victory was achieved by domination in AD 2001 at 2679 score.

I was nuked twice by the Azteks in the last war. The second time they nuked their own town right after I took it, can you believe? Like if the USSR would had nuked Stalingrad instead of taking the fight to get it back

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Theseus
Q: My GA was triggered by Smith's... anyone understand that?

I've long suspected that when you build a wonder, it can at least sometimes cause captured wonders to trigger a golden age. That seemed to happen to me in the England/Emperor CivFanatics GOTM a few months back, and if the civilopedia is right, Leonardo's by itself shouldn't have triggered my golden age in mini-tourney 2. Now we have a religious/industrious civ getting a golden age from Smith's, which is commercial. Am I right to suspect that you held captured wonders that covered religious and industrious?

I don't know whether that phenomenon is a bug or a feature, or whether it's something that happens on a regular basis or just once in a blue moon. But the evidence that it does happen seems to be mounting.

Nathan

[Theseus]

Yup, Pyramids and Bach, captured from Aztecs.

Good call.

[Chemical Ollie]

Ooops!

I was so tired last night so I posted the last saved game instead of the last autosave. The correct file is below. This is how too win: Invade an Aztec city or two with modern armor. Watch the stupids nuke their own former citizens. Enjoy the victory.

Domination 2001 AD at 2679 score

[Txurce]

Report from 1710: the conservative approach.

Reviewing the posts already made, I am again very impressed by the efforts you all made to win via domination, which is not the path I took.

Looking back over this game, it’s possible to win it without the Great Lighthouse, if détente could be established with Rome. Arguing against this is the fact that the other four civs would make contact much earlier, and probably leave Egypt in the dust technologically.

I chose the conservative route. After building settlers galore up to the mountain chokepoint, I decided to trigger a Golden Age by loosing my chariots on Rome around 800 BC, while simultaneously building the Great Lighthouse. Rome had no iron or horses, and fell victim to swooping WCs protected by spearmen on high ground. I paused once to extort all their techs, then delivered the coup de grace in 510 BC.

However, the war netted me only one elite unit, and not even close to one GL. This meant I would have to build the FP, which in turn meant building it fairly close to Thebes – at the chokepoint. It also meant I couldn’t easily bounce my palace offshore. This led me to an even more conservative decision: to quit expanding and win via space-race.

I built the Great Lighthouse, and set sail. By 50 AD I had met all the civs but the Aztecs; by 300, I had sold contact to everyone. I founded a republic late – in 410 – and after completing the FP in 690, filled in my continent with a total of 15 cities. I built the Sistine Chapel in 750, but missed Copernicus by two, Newton by three, and Suffrage by one. Democracy was introduced a little late (I was chasing Newton, then lost track), around 1200.

Business as usual took a skip when I discovered I had no coal. This led to my building a city on the island to the south in 1390, where the Chinese had already settled. But due to frequent trade, the world was a surprisingly peaceful place. Other than my destruction of Rome, there had only been a static war between China and Japan versus Babylon.

This changed very soon. The Aztecs were the #1 civ, and declared war on Egypt after failing to extort Scientific Method. My tech lead paid off as I instantly recruited the rest of the world in an alliance against the Aztecs, in exchange for one tech. I easily fought off three Aztec riflemen with my WC-upgraded cavalry, and started to rake in the really big bucks from tech trade after building the TOE in 1520. Around this time I learned that my hilly continent also had no rubber, so I sent off seven cavalry and one riflemen to take the rubber-producing Aztec city to the east of the island to my south. I took it in 1610, abandoned it, and built a new city on the coastal rubber source. Soon after, I made peace with the Aztecs for a lot of cash.

In 1685 the Babylonians made peace with the Aztecs after taking three island cities (the Chinese took one). These were the only AI military gains in the entire game. As this war ended, little Japan declared war against big China. I am waiting to see what happens, as I hold my tech lead, feel the love of all but the Aztecs, and watch my treasury head toward 5000 gold. In 1705 I researched MT, and am now building an armored defense to complement my wads of artillery. Airports for my offshore resource centers are next.

This very quick, mostly mindless game reminds me of Civ2: fun in a very different way. On Monarch, a 15-city core is enough to all but guarantee a peaceful victory, as long as no other civ becomes too huge; on an archipelago map, this was all but an impossibility. To a degree, I feel like I played this game the easy way; my only defense is that I had never played on an archipelago map before, and didn’t want to screw up royally in my first tourney.

I’ll post a wrap-up when I finish. The game is well into that slow, dull section.

[Txurce]

I finished my game in 1872, via diplomatic victory. I was well on my way to space, but didn't want to play anymore. I have never been better liked - the vote was three for me, Mao for Mao, and the ostracized Aztecs abstaining.

Very little of note went on since my last post (1710). The Aztecs attacked again in 1812, were instantly repulsed, and once again had the whole world declare war on them. This time I took the two-city island that gave them oil and rubber, but otherwise only fought them on the high seas.

Anything else? Well, I had almost 20,000 gold saved by the end, but couldn't get tech close to the four-turn minimum. That's what I get for basically refusing to expand from the home turf.

The attached save is close enough.

[DrFell]

Well, I had had enough of playing for domination and conquest victories, so I decided to go for a spaceship victory (something I've only tried once before). I knew it would probably give me a slower finish than some, but it would give me a chance to try a more builder type strategy, made easy because it's monarch! (I'm used to deity).

The start position was pretty good, but the rest of the island was mediocre. I quickly filled it up with nicely spaced cities, and closed the choke point leading to Rome. After heading to republic and mapmaking, I started exploring the area around my island. I quickly found a fairly decent island I could palace jump to (the island to the south of the one I started on), and when I switched into republic I engineered a short war with Rome, to trigger my golden age. At this point I decided to go all out research, building libraries, harbours, and marketplaces in most cities.

Not too long afterwards I made contact with Japan and China. They only had a tech or two which I didn't have, unfortunately, but I was able to sell techs on to them for a fair price. Using some strategic tech-trading, I got into the middle ages pretty quick, and then went on a path for universities (made contact with Babylon and got monotheism from them, after researching engineering). Nothing exciting happened for awhile after this, I managed to get the AI to research chemistry and invention for me, but after that they were of little use, as I had too big a tech lead. I sold off a lot of techs to them so I could keep science as high as possible (and traded off my strategic resources too for extra cash and luxuries). I also managed to build nearly all the science wonders (only 'missed' GL because I deliberately didn't build it).

Unfortunately, the formerly weak Japan decided to conquer and wipe China off of their continent (suprising because China had once been the strongest power in the game apart from me when I first met them, and Japan had been the second weakest). China had been a strong trading partner, but I never got much cash out of them after that.

By the end of the industrial age, I was 5-6 techs ahead of the most advanced AIs. I sold off my old techs for huge amounts of gold per turn, which helped keep my research engine running. The modern age slowed things down a bit, with average research times being about 6 turns for a tech. I also decided to go to war again with Rome for fun (lots of cities had nothing useful to build but wealth at this point), and to take away their oil source. I easily cut through them with my infantry and artillery, capturing Rome and a couple other cities. Not too long after this I managed to build and launch my spaceship, getting a victory in 1770. This game was also the first time I've built and found the iron works useful Quite an interesting game, and I've continued it and gone for the world conquest with modern armours.

[Txurce]

Dr Fell, I noticed that your second capital was size 25. How did you grow it to that size, and why?

I tried my first palace jump the other day, aiming for a size 6 on the other end of my civ. Despite every other city being a size 3 or less, the palace only jumped one city, to another 3. My only guess is that the 3 which got the new palace had more improvements.

Any thoughts? because yes, I was quite frustrated.

[DrFell]

I irrigated the cows around the capital to get it to grow in size quicker, and built a granary when it hit size 13, hadn't anything more important to build at that point anyway... was too lazy to change the squares to mines when the city hit 20 But a lot of turns the workers were being used to clean up pollution anyway, and the extra scientists helped my science rate out a tiny bit, so I suppose it was ok.

What year did you try the palace jump, and what kind of improvements did you have in your city? I could dig up the save near where I did the jump, I think I still have it. In fact I have every 5-10 turn saves for this game.