Many Leaders Game 3 - Prince Domination

I'm surprised to be ahead I must admit. From TriviAl's report it looked like he had more land than me. It'll be a close race in any case to see who has to pick Genghis Khan for MLG4 - The Cultured Monarch .

I'm even more surprised at how few people have made incursions on the other continent (me, TriviAl, yena, Ralph and Ad Hoc). Economically it shouldn't be a problem (I still don't have Forbidden Palace built and can run +ve at 70%). If you're worried about it, have cities build wealth and research and lower your slider, whip markets, grocers, banks and courthouses.

Everyone is still in a good position to win so we'll see how the games go.

Turn 201 – Promissing:

Turn 204 Barcelona, the last Spanish city in continent, falls. By now I have no more issues ( will need to do some ferrying units ) with Spain, so I negotiated with Izzy:

I could have take all of her techs , but it is not worth the trouble.... Spain now have 2 cities in th northern islands.... will take them when it pleases me.

Turn 206 Find our first lost civ:

Turn 207 Second one ( and in war with the first ) .

Turn 208 Completed the quest... choosed the free specialist

Turn 209 Byzantium wants our help against the Khmer. No worries we’ll get there, but for now no.

And the Hindu AP is finished.... F9 says that is a unknow civ that haves it ( hopefully in a coastal city )

Found our favourite tech whore:

Turn 210 Khmer wants us too. Not now....

And we found last civ and AP resident, our dear friend Wang

Turn 211 Several requests for maps. Bought Wang’s for 120 gold

Turn 212 Education is in, go for meditation .....

Turn 213 Meditation is in, go for philo

Turn 214 Izzy wants CS for free... yeah, yeah....

Turn 215 We circumnavigated ..... +2 moves above regular civs ships

Turn 221 Time to say goodbye Shaka....

That fierce battle between a hevily promoted Warlord Berzerker and a archer give us another GG..... Will be settled in capitol

Turn 224 Got lib, and Astro out of it

Turn 229 Spain?... Can’t remember where it was.....

Turn 237 Changed civics:


Reminders for next turnset

The invasion fleet is being assembled, lacking some escort frigates and the upgrade of cannons. Target is wang, that have both SoZ and the AP in coastal cities ( ), being the more problematic foe ATM. Justinian is strong enough to give headaches so I’ll leave him alone for now.
After chemistry and steel, teching will be toward Rifling to steamroll with heavily promoted rifles and to trade for natio for drafting ( I have a nifty idea about it.... )

I move to finish off Justinian on the mainland.

1660AD - get offered an event it's hard to say no to!



In 1665 I capture Yayoi (barb) and Nicea (Justinian).

In 1680AD Antioch (Justinian) and Dorylaeum (Justinian - Island).

In 1685AD capture Angora (Justinian - Island).

Going to pick up a bit when the Byzantine cities come out of revolt, but don't think it will be quite enough - start to Maneuver troops for a strike at Wang - his cultural pressure must be weakened and his cities look tasty. Sorry buddy!

1690AD - discover railroad.

1695AD - capture Minoan by naval invasion. The 2nd to last byzantine city - on an island.

1700AD - stacks ready to descend on wanger and finish off the byzantines either next turn or the one after. Culture goes to 50% to keep off war weariness and fill empty space faster.

1705AD - I'm the most cultured! Woo. I celebrate this feat by blowing a bunch of stuff up and declaring war on my korean friends - now that's cultured for ya! Here's the plan:



I recapture one of my Khmer cities that had flipped to Korea. Move troops into position for Trebizond and shell its defenses off with frigates.

1710AD - caputre Trebizond - finally finishing off the Byzantine civilisation. The Koreans lose Ulsan to a cavarly stack, muskets double move in to defend. Task force razes Pyongsong and I found toulouse there with a handy settler. Main body of troops maneuver into position to take Wonsan. Frigates move to harrass the Korean shoreline, soften up cities and sink their fleets. I buy in Mansa.

Killing the Byzantines was nice - here's an example of my WW problems.



1715AD - guess the culture rate finally pushed me over the final hurdle. I win as this turn starts.

My big goal was to secure state property for the invasion. Got to the point where each new city was costing only 12g. The costs level off at some number of city. The only issue was having to keep the culture slider high enough to combat WW. In retrospect, the pyramids/police state would have been huge.

What's the plan now?

Win in as few turns as possible (I'm hoping 15!). TriviAl is poised to snatch victory from me here.

How?

Destroy Justinian...

Anything else?

NO

We start at 50.42% land (need 64).

2nd turn in (51.13), I decide to declare after assembling my troops properly. I could have declared earlier to chase the win but then risked being caught out on one front and taken longer. We'll see...



I move 3 fronts of rifles/cannons out and see what Justinian has in store. As a side note, I've got some lovely drill IV rifles upgraded from my Oromo Warriors and some CR3 ones that were maces.

Isolated catatphracts are all that appears first IBT. Rifles eat these for breakfast.

Nicaea falls (52.92).



Nicomedia falls (54.23).



Antioch falls (56.38).



Mistra falls (57.81).



Constantinople falls (59.36).



Adrianople falls (59.83).

Thessalonica falls (63.77).



I make peace, dial culture to 100% and press enter.



15 turns, just as predicted.



Final thoughts:

Fairly happy with the game. Could have improved by being more decisive or earlier in dealing with Shaka. Definately made the right move by buddying up to Izzy and letting her research all those techs for me.

Happy with the leader, one of the strongest in all situations I think. Organised is one hell of a trait, especially once your empire grows and Creative is useful in these games too (especially early as you can place city in the right spot and get early access to their resources). The UB ain't anything special but the UU was great if fairly short-lived if you go for rifles soon after (which I did).

I just have to wait and see if TriviAl can beat 1725AD

Just noticed after posting my game that you had posted yours. Well done. I must admit your game looked better situated to get the land quicker as you had already started on Justinian. Although 2 turns . The exact number of turns I delayed my declaration on Justinian.

At the start of the round only Justinian remained on the other big continent, and I had declared war on him and taken three cities, and killed his main stack. In this round I took the rest of his cities:

248: Constantinople
253: Yosodharapura
254: Thessalonica
257: Nicaea
259: Antioch
260: Nicomedia
262: Seoul
263: Angora and Saxon
265: Trebizond
267: Iconium
268: Now I set culture to max. level to pop the borders of my new cities
269: Domination win!


I could have won 2-3 turns earlier if I hadn't lost Thessalonica to a stupid counter attack (I took it back the next turn), and if I had increased the culture slider earlier.

This was basically just a long, tedious, exercise in moving troops to another city, blast the defenders, heal up, and move onto the next one. I started with grenadiers, cannons and musketeers, and later got riflemen from overseas. The only unusual thing I did was to build a large number of airships. They didn't win the war for me, but they were useful for pounding any enemy troop that dared to show itself outside the cities, which meant that there were no counter-attacks on my stacks as they moved into position.


Statistics:

i finished the game last night and i'll post more when i'm on my own computer (for some reason i'm not really allowed to play CIV on the girlfriends) but it took me until the early 1900's to finally subdue the other island. WW against Justininan was a real pain.

After completing my turns, I took a look at the other games and realized how far behind I really was (technologically). Some people were already mowing over the AIs with grenadiers and the such, while I assaulted the second continent with my humble macemen and trebuchets. Though I'm not doing the worst, I'm starting to get discouraged in seeing that Ozbenno is already done and that these turns take eons to finish. This screenshot sums up my forty turns:



The Unfortunate Save

Grats to Oz and Yena for some nice finishes there!

2 turns.


Although looking back on it, I was really trying to save turns at the end, cut one here and there. But earlier, I'd just been frittering them away on unecessary researches and stuff - figure saving them 1000 years before the end would have been much easier?

I did like the french for that game - organised is just powerful. And Charismatic is rather nice - helped get some decent units and larger cities earlier on.

The UU seemed really unlucky for me - kept losing them at 90% odds. But the extra move was nice for bringing in emergency defenders and the like.

The UB might shine more if I'd been running rep - wasn't bad, just didn't seem to have much of an impact.

Heh - culture is going to hurt - never won that way before - I've tried, but keep getting distracted. Time to find a decent guide, methinks!

The conquest of the main island took the usual route of city hopping, Wang was completely eliminated, Justinian confined to his northern islands and finally sury eliminated. WW and flipping made this a painful exercise but the advent of Cavalry finally enable the conquest.

My only disappointment was at the end i was pumping out combat 3 Blitz cavalry out of Turfan but never got to use them.

The plan from round 4 was to research to Economics for the trade routes and free GM. Then prepare for war with Suryavarman.

Justinian finished off Wang Kon



I got a Great Scientist before getting Economics. I used the great scientist for a golden age and the GM for a trade mission.

Civics change was made at the start of the Golden Age to Free Market and Free Religion, HR, Bureaucracy and Slavery were other 3

At the end of the Golden Age I changed to Theocracy. Theocracy with barracks would give me level 3 units out of the gate.

I popped Gems in a mine north of Kish



+1 happy, +1 happy with forge, for free, always really nice

When Rifling was in, with the money I got from the GM trade mission (2500 I think) I upgraded all my CRIII and CRII vultures to Rifleman. My stack set sail for Suryavarman, with 1 boat oddly lagging 1 square behind the others



Mansa demanded I stopped trading with Surya which I did. When my stack reached Khmer it was time to declare



I had researched Steel but I changed my mind to Mil Trad for Cavalry.

I razed Bantay Kdel, it only got stone which I didn't need urgently, I was afraid of the costs.



Surya's counterattack showed up. I took Angkor Wat the next turn and defended the counterattack inside the city. Gave some Rifle City Defender 3/ Drill 1 and some others City Defender 1/ Drill 4. Time to leverage the protective trait!



The counterattack suicided on the rifleman, the ones that withdrew were counterattacked the next turn.

Mansa put forth an AP vote for Diplomatic Victory. It gave me a good scare, I was thinking he couldn't vote himself in due to the patch. But I was still worried I had lost. Here's the tally



Noone likes him enough to vote for him

Justinian had 'enough on his hands' the whole round, and apparently the AP vote put him over the brink



He captured 1 island city and razed another.

I took 3 more cities from Surya. I think I've lost 1 rifleman total. Here's how the war is looking



Noone else has gunpowder yet, much less rifling. Plan is to finish off Surya and then take enough of Justinian's cities to give me the domination win. I've spammed some cities in the northern islands to increase my land percentage as well.

With Justinian behind in tech and busy with Mansa the backstab should go quickly and hopefully the game won before the end of next round

*Edit* Domination score