Editor's Note: This content was produced for my original Geocities website back in early 2002. When Geocities was about to shut down, I reproduced the entire report in html and uploaded it to my website. Everything has been left unaltered in its original state, forming a time capsule of sorts for my early writings.
Between my relatively early win in GOTM7 and putting off GOTM8 until I had finished Epic2, it had been quite a while since I had played one of the Game of the Month games. While every game of Civ3 in theory plays the same way, it had been a long time since I had played a game where results were measured solely by score. In my opinion, this is a poor evaluation of the quality of the game played, but it nonetheless necessitated a different strategy for this game. In order to get a high score, you must reach the domination threshold as early as possible and then "milk" the game for as long as possible. I had absolutely no intention of wasting my time on an activity as pointless as milking a game (long after victory was achieved), but I thought I'd let the game stick around to 2050AD without really doing anything to increase score. That was the philosophy for the game going in (I wasn't worried about winning after all; Monarch doesn't challenge me anymore), and it remained to see how well I would be able to follow it.
Thunderfall's comment on this starting position was that: "The starting position is probably the best one in all of the GOTMs. You have easy access to a number of luxury resources and there are *numerous* rivers nearby. It should be a pretty easy game if you're used to Monarch level." Was TF looking at the same map as I was? GOTM6 had an unbelievably good starting location, with numerous wheat, cattle, and rivers close by. This map was not nearly so friendly. True it had rivers, but they were buried in the middle of vast jungles - a huge problem for the non-Industrious Germans. Numerous luxuries? Well there were 3 easy to get, but "numerous" to me means the 6 that I was able to get uncontested in Epic1. This wasn't a bad starting location, but a good one? Far from it.
I moved the worker onto the mountain to start and, not seeing anything better, founded in the starting location. This revealed that a wheat was located in the city's 21 tile radius, which was nice. I made getting irrigation to it a top priority. I normally like to start with 2 warriors and then a granary, but due to the raging barbarians on this map I built three warriors and kept the third one in Berlin for defensive purposes. Then I started my granary build. As a result I was the last civ to produce a second city, but the pace picked up considerably thereafter.
Contact was made with Russia in 3600BC, only 8 turns into the game. That's really early, so I expected to find them very close to the starting location. Although I had two warriors out scouting, I didn't find their cities until around 1200BC. It didn't matter either way, since I had no intention of doing an early war gambit - too risky for me. I play a more conservative style that may result in fewer points, but will get a win every time. 20 turns into the game at 3000BC, the map looked like this:
Of course, as it would turn out, Moscow was just south of the area I had explored. I also went south and east first, and thus didn't know about the relatively good lands to the northwest. Sometimes luck determines what happens in the game. The granary build slowed me down as usual, putting me behind the other civs in the early game. I got nothing from goody huts (one tech) while some of my expansionist civ neighbors were rolling in the benefits. Russia quickly got no fewer than 5 techs ahead of me as a result of goody hut luck. 5 techs! This was a Monarch game, not a Deity one! They were halfway through the ancient age in like 2500BC. Not what I expected at all. England was just as lucky when I met them, with a comparable tech level. Fortunately I was able to buy into the techs and catch up at a fast pace.
I didn't found my second city until 2390BC. It was put to the east, where I had done the most exploring. This was actually in the opposite direction from the other civs, but of course I didn't know that at the time. Here's the map from that date:
A few words on worker priorities; I started out by mining and roading the two bonus grasslands, then chopped down a forest tile to bring irrigation to the grassland wheat. I can't stand mining a cattle or wheat tile, and the great increase in food from irrigating the wheat more than paid for the turns wasting chopping down the forest. I also checked the other civs each turn for workers to buy and finally was able to get one from Russia in 2150BC for 27g. I love getting those early workers, as it's such an enormous boost for non-industrious civs.
The early stage of development was very peaceful in my game. I continued to build settler after settler, and used scouting warriors to deal with barbs before they could cause an uprising. I understand that a lot of people attacked early and killed Russia, but that's just not my style of play. Things moved along peacefully, with nothing of notice really going on. With that in mind, time to go on to the next page...
