5th Apolyton Civ3 Tournament : 1-21/Feb/2002

MarkG · February 1, 2002, 15:22

Theme: It's a small, cold scientific world
Size: Small Map
Ocean coverage: 60%
Land form: Continents
Climate: Wet
Temperature: Cool
Age: 3 billion years
Barbarians: Villages only
Civilization: Zulus
Level: Monarch
Opponents: the five scientific civs (Babylonians, Persians, Germans, Greeks, Russians)
Huts: Removed
Victory types allowed: All
Version: 1.16f

MarkG · February 1, 2002, 15:32

this time you have a decent starting location

MarkG · February 1, 2002, 15:36

if you have problem downloading it see below

MarkG · February 1, 2002, 15:42

alternative download
http://apolyton.net/civ3/tournaments...urnament-5.zip

rules:
- no re-loading
- no use of external programs
- use autosave
- submit the last saved game, zipped
- name the saved game and the zip file as your login

- if you want to replay the game, feel free to do so and post a game here, but state it clearly! such submissions will not qualify for the final results.

godinex · February 1, 2002, 16:48

OK. I will be back.

King of Rasslin · February 1, 2002, 18:54

That is like a perfect starting location

Poor science civs die very quickly to the impi. Spearmen are so overpowered anyway, making so horses can't run from them is úber.

Looks fun, il check it out sometime.

SanPellegrino · February 1, 2002, 19:45

A Civ I wouldn't pick, a map I wouldn't pick, opponents I wouldn't pick, if I would pick them

I'll give it a try

AJ Corp. The FAIR · February 1, 2002, 20:22

It's the year 420 AD.

It was written in the stars that the manlike warriors of our great ancestors, the zulu people, were meant to flourish after founding new cities to the appealing southern regions under the proudest city of them all ... Zimbabwe!

By the year 1250 BC the Zulu population outnumbered the neighbouring Persians in the north by two to one. Our great ruler by then had already set its ambitions on a small and mysterious but attractive piece of land in the West. For the time being the Persians were tolerated as their scientists seemed usefull from time to time. However, after the 6 cities on the mother continent had soon after settlement become religiously voodoo-nized, our leaders set primary goals on settling and dominating the apparently large continent on the west, the place were our oldest ancestors once used to live, so tell our druids.

Meanwhile the Zimbabwean built Colossus in 1000 BC and Great Library in 310 AD, after galleying in on the German and the Babylonian, whose empires were told to flourish behind large water masses to the East. After trading maps, our Wise Ruler of the Zulu saw no danger coming from those scary white and stinking humanlikes who had never before appeared so pale and unhealthy in our eyes.

Now, in the year 420 AD, our Great Inspiror has summoned me to start writing on an autobiography that He described as 'one that will stand the test of time' and 'inspire generations to come'.
He decided that the Zulu should rule the Old Worlds, obsoleting the policy of tolerance toward the Persian.

I, Justitia et Audacias, hereby officially declare that we Zulu outmaster the other civilizations, temporarely counting 500 points versus 400 for the German. We aim to build up our horseman armies and upgrade our warriors as for the first time in our existence, Our Trueest Leader will direct us to WAR!

We should have conquered them rather ...

quick!?

(no babs, no fights, fast expansion, easy building, easy and early winning? easy tournament? our druids will let you know ... asap)

MarkG · February 1, 2002, 21:33

yeah, even i have survived up to 1200ad

since this is a small map, i'll be starting the 6th tournament next week...

Sirian · February 2, 2002, 03:10

Mark: I see you liked PART of my scenerio suggestion.

Just about everything except the map size and land formations. I had in mind a large, underpopulated map and forcing the militaristic Zulu to have to build well... a small, overcrowded map sounds more like it plays right into their hands! And you think this will compare to the last game? Hmm. Well... nothing to do but try it and see how it goes.

- Sirian

dadacp · February 2, 2002, 07:18

Is using the no capital exploit allowed? Use the starting city to build an attack force and disband the starting city just before conquering a city. This results in not having any capital. Having no capital means zero corruption, even during anarchy, and no culture flipping.

MarkG · February 2, 2002, 13:45

Quote:

Originally posted by dadacp
Is using the no capital exploit allowed? Use the starting city to build an attack force and disband the starting city just before conquering a city. This results in not having any capital. Having no capital means zero corruption, even during anarchy, and no culture flipping.

yeap, all such exploits are not allowed

Duncan Idaho · February 2, 2002, 22:05

Too sleepy at the moment to recount the whole story. The condensed version would go something like this:

Starting location is excellent. With the Persians scrambling for survival, I managed to expand much faster than the AI's. Grabbed a few more continents. At the beginning of medieval times, I had all the luxuries, more cities than any AI. I beelined for democracy and spent the rest of the game peacefully consolidating my advantage.

The hardest part was figuring out a good spot to build the Forbidden Palace in. I decided on some remote town called Umfolozi. Quite surprised me how well placed that one was; two continents in range!

Most of the middle- and endgame I spent waiting for techs to be researched. Even though I researched every tech in 4 turns, things seemed to pass slowly without warfare. The AIs weren't much use either. Not one of the AIs researched a tech after ancient era; they all bought every single tech from me.

This game was easy. I'd almost say 'too easy', but I can't spell that yet

P.S. I think OCC victory is in reach on this starting location. Zimbabwe had 13000 culture when I finished, I'm sure a dedicated player will be able to make it.

Luck to all who haven't started yet (why are you reading this).

Bloodaxe · February 3, 2002, 13:12

This is the first game I've played in 6 weeks, and boy am I out of practice.

Its now 2:30am Monday (I've played this one straight through) and I got to go to work in a few hours, as they say s#!t happens. Been on holidays and got lots of cool new games for chrissy if you're wondering why I haven't played civ.

What a strange game its been, my first histogram win, and let me tell you it takes some time. the main problemmo was fighting the Russians straight after pounding the Persians (they respawned too). I should have put my resources into expansion instead of getting into a long protracted war.

Been musing on the save/reload issue. Commandos 2 has a counter in the end game summery that tells you how many times the game has been reloaded. If someone could make something similar for civ and the tourneys gave say 10 reloads for sleep/work/crashes etc then the problem would be solved.

Anyhow time for sleep, here's my game... Damn I thought I'd be the first to post one this time but I guess I wasn't fast enough.

Alkis · February 3, 2002, 15:28

Marko, what's the goal, fastest victory or highest score?

It's funny to have to write in English, don't you think?

PFREMONT · February 3, 2002, 15:43

Zulu conquest in 1420 AD

Very slow beginning as I had to research alphabet + writing + map making (around 120 turns I guess). Persians may be scientific but in this game they only kept attacking me and did not come out with any valuable advance.
I reduced them to one small Capital in the far North of our continent.
At last in 500 BC could start going around with my galleys and found out Germans had a nice piece of continent + large cities + were quite advanced.
So I focused all my energy in building up and bringing 5 galleys full of 10 veteran swordsmen to Berlin.
Conquered the 4 main German cities and gave them to the Persians to prevent them to flip back to "Germanism". After Germans signed peace and gave me all their remaining cities on their continent I easily captured the "Persian German" cities back and built Forbidden Palace in Berlin (500 AD).
Next came the Greeks (800 AD) as soon as I had knights.
Then the Babylonians (1 000 AD) and the Russians (1 300 AD)
When I was finished with the Russians I turned back to what was left of the Germans at the other end of the map but my logistics was not ready and I lost a few turns to bring my troops.
I had the same old galleys I used almost 2 000 years before ...

So here we are Conquest Victory in 1420 : 4060pts

MarkG · February 3, 2002, 16:26

Quote:

Originally posted by Alkis
Marko, what's the goal, fastest victory or highest score?

we have winners in both categories

Quote:

It's funny to have to write in English, don't you think?

i''ve been writing in english for every day the last 5.5 years and i've never left greece

adamb · February 4, 2002, 07:44

Had a really hard time with the 4th tournament file (that was a tough game!), looking forward to this one! Usually play on very different settings so its going to be a totally new game for me

Conqueror · February 4, 2002, 09:41

So i ended up with a cultural victory, Zimbabwe hit the 20,000 culture points at 1924 AD, actually my first 20,000 culture points in a city ever

Dont know about you but i like to read how others have been playing so here ill tell a small story.

Noticed from the game description that there were no barbarians and didnt build much military in the beginning as i tought it was a good idea to to explore around first and build few scouts & settlers, but the persians didnt like the fact that i didnt give them 2 techs and 60 gold they demanded, and sneak attacked my scout - well, time to get rid of the persians.

Those bastards had few of their cities up in the hills with walls & spearmen in them so it took me a while and loads of archers to conquer them.

From that moment on, the game was very easy, nothing compared to tournament 4

Just land grab & land grab while the "scientific" civs lagged behind in tech the whole game, seems strange that scientific civs performed so lousy on tech and concentrated on bullying me demanding techs & gold.

Maybe the scientific means that they are especialized on extorting techs from human player

around 1890 i noticed i was going to get Cultural victory in some time and decided to switch my cities to wealth, fortify troops and halt my campaign against germans (last ai remaining). It was much faster this way: i just pressed enter the remaining turns what took only few minutes instead of having to conquer remaining 20-30 german cities which would have taken 2 hours.

Good Game again. Altough i liked Tournament 4 more, in my humble opinion Tournament 4 is the best so far

godinex · February 4, 2002, 13:00

I was trying of achieve a domination or a conquest victory, but was diplomatic.

Xanathon · February 4, 2002, 19:33

i'm a newbie

in 2012 i made a Spaceship victory.. sorry only 1500 points

will be better next time

LarryLard · February 4, 2002, 20:47

Well I thought I'd give one of these a go... unfortunately shortly after making contact with the Persians, they sent a warrior over and on the ensuing warrior vs warrior battle they captured Zimbabwe... game over 68 points

ROFL

I won't bother attaching the SAV file

Sirian · February 5, 2002, 06:00

Mark, I was wrong.

This map was about as far from crowded as it could get with max opponents in the game. It played a lot closer to what I had in mind than I expected. The "win" came fairly easily, but it was quite challenging in a different way, racing the clock, rushing to expand.

I achieved Domination in 1120AD, score 5385 (top of my score list! I don't do a lot of ancient games). God bless the Great Wall. I don't think I've ever gotten so much mileage out of any wonder in any other game. I don't think I've recruited that many longbows in all my other games combined! LOL!

Didn't get chivalry until the final turn, didn't build a single knight. Didn't get a great leader until the next to last turn, used him to rush a trophy wonder.

This game was so very different from my usual "build efficiently, conquer in the industrial age" playstyle, and it's all thanks to the map. Good one.

I'll post my save and some more details as the competition winds down.

- Sirian

Flight · February 5, 2002, 08:34

i wont bother attaching the sav unless you ask for it cos its so poor

Realised after i killed the persians in 300bc that it probably wasnt a good idea to have done that. Expanded a bit but not enough, capturing almost all the continent to the south west of the start. I got pretty far behind in tech after the GL ran out and had to buy my way back by putting the slider to 100% and hoping it chose cheap things to sell off.

I did get theory of ev. and sold atomic theory for lots of money to everyone, but then they all caught up with me within a couple of new techs.

The germans declared war for no real reason that i could see and the MPP web gave them no hope (germany vs everyone). The greeks eventually wiped them out while i suffered even in a communism from -ve gold at 0% sciene. So i got out of the war (in which greece remained a democracy throughout and gained about a 3 tech advantage - how!?) and managed to stay on top until the time ran out. I did build the UN in 2036 but only the russians voted for me, despite my many gifts to the babylonians, who voted for themselves (same with greece)

Didn't fit my playstyle

- i hate island invasions; and the tech seemed really slow despite lots of tech improvements
/me goes back to try tourny 4

[edit score was 1777 or so, won by 36 points iirc]

MarkG · February 5, 2002, 08:55

Quote:

Originally posted by Flight
i wont bother attaching the sav unless you ask for it cos its so poor

well, if you want to appear in the results, post it. if not...

godinex · February 5, 2002, 19:38

Poor Germans, they are always the first to be punished.

godinex · February 5, 2002, 19:39

Quote:

Originally posted by Flight

[edit score was 1777 or so, won by 36 points iirc]

Great! You are my hero!!!

Santa Cruz Tim · February 7, 2002, 22:30

Well, at least I won this one!

Getting rid of the Persians early on was easy, with Impis and archers.

Russia should have been next, but as my knights were on their way over, Germany and Babylon decided to gang up on me. I warded them off for what seemed like forever then finally killed off the Russians, but not until after they got their Cossacks.

At that point I was way behind the others in Culture, but even in science. I decided to use the Mutual Protection pacts to my advantage. Got a MPP with Babylon and Germany and kept them for the rest of the game. Eventually Greece declared war on me... bye bye Greece. Then I got the U.N and didn't allow a vote until Germany declared war on me. Next vote: Babylon votes for me. End of story.

Fun game. I personally hate having so many islands, so it was a bit different than what I usually play.

Thanks!

7EA · February 8, 2002, 04:21

So I guess I have to attach the last save I made just before I pressed end turn and won. Well I thing that is what I have to do so here it is (I'm new to this).

Now lets see... how to attach.. hmm...

mirrorball · February 8, 2002, 19:15

Here's my submitted game for tournament 5. It's a histographic win - 3,000 plus points. I could have won by diplomacy sooner but the d*mn-*ssed babylonians always abstained!

I used the expansionist adv of the zulus to the hilt putting up cities whenever I can. I took out the persians early, then made the mistake of not finishing off the babylonians. Then, I ended the russians misery, and watched as the babs and the greeks fought the germans in the late game.