King of the World #5: Isabella

reverend oats said:

I would want to a variant in the France game- no conquering European cities, except by culture.
Similarly for the English- No owning mainland European cities, except for Scandinavia.

Otherwise the game is won as soon as you conquer Europe with axes.

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Perhaps if the difficulty was notched up to deity this would be okay... Be nice to see how Hatshepsut and Cyrus end up as a result.

Update?

I literally just finished the final round of the game. I managed to take over the world and convert it to Christianity at the same time!

It's honestly two or three rounds' worth of goings-on, but, of course, the game was decided millenia ago. It's gonna take me a while to write up the big finish all proper-like, but, until I do, here's the game-ending save for posterity's sake:

finish in 1510? That's gotta be one hell of a score -- great job!

Reiterating my vote for HC next.

What a game!

By the way, I vote for Mongolia next. Not a popular choice.

Part I

I started the final march to victory with a modernizing Civics change:



We may be a fanatical zealot, but that doesn't mean we have to be barbaric about it.

In 1260, the city of Tubruq finally fell to Alexander's insidious culture:



What does Greece have that Spain doesn't? Philosophy? Art? Bah. Tell that to the Conquistadors. Seriously, I wish there was something I could have done about that. Ah, well. It's not like that city is anything more than an ornament at this point, anyway.

Shortly thereafter, it was time to, once again, open hostilities with the remaining free states of the world:



I also grabbed Divine Right from Mansa Musa, finally activating the Spiral Minaret.

In 1875, I made a difficult decision:



The Age of the Citadel was to come to a close. We had enough promoted Cannons to conquer the world, and the trade routes weren't as important, I thought, as keeping the Golden Age rolling with the free Great Merchant.

Meanwhile, Montezuma had Roosevelt on the ropes. I laid the groundwork to come to America's rescue:





Unfortunately....



So much for saving Roosevelt and sweeping him off to an elaborate Spanish wedding.

Ah, well. There are simpler pleasures in life. Like conquest:



Asoka didn't really want to fight, anyway, so he capitulated immediately:



And he got Delhi back.

The stack didn't skip a beat. It was onward through Bangladesh and into China:



And, simultaneously, our ships charged into Central American waters:



My plan to conduct short, quick raids in Appalachia kind of fell apart when Roosevelt became an Aztec vassal. So it was back to the "traditional" strategy.

This led to quite a Diplomacy screen:



Everybody's at war with somebody.

In America, Mexico fell quickly. Conquistadors and Cannon cut through the 3-4 Macemen and Longbow garrisons like butter. In 1330, though, Montezuma finally pushed all his chips to the center of the table:



If he had Engineering, I would be screwed, here. Monty would have been able to attack Teotihuacan directly with 3-move roads. Thankfully, he was only able to move the stack adjacent to the city. Here, the Flanking of Conquistadors and Collateral Damage of Cannons shone:



And with the ability to fortify properly, they also managed to hold out behind the city walls.

We also managed to play Conquistadors of the Caribbean:



Which was fun.

Our Conquistadors had similar success on the Eastern Front:



With the Aztec horde demolished, and with Chinese cities falling like dominoes, our last major rivals gave up:





Of course, over the course of the World War, Tokugawa, Roosevelt, and Huayna Capac had broken their chains of vassalage.

So we were still at war, but at this point, it was all mop-up duty.

To be continued!

Saladin... Saladin

Part II

In order to conquer the Japanese home islands, we were going to need boats, and our fleet was still on the way back from setting up our New World "colonies."

So I decided to declare a temporary peace:



After all, there was one more semi-major power that I had semi-forgotten about:



The great Khan had a stack of his own:



Needless to say, Beijing was in trouble. So, what did I do?





Back in America...





So now we were down to Japan and Inca. What about Mongolia? Oh, yeah.

Genghis Khan did not, in fact, ride on Beijing. As a result, I was able to pick apart his stack with impunity. As a result....



He also converted to Christianity. He's such a good boy.

Communism gave us a few things. First, we were able to convert to State Property:



Which literally cut our maintenance by about 400 gold per turn. Secondly, we got a Great Spy. Together with the other three Great People hanging out in Paris, we were able to piece together one last Golden Age!

In Chile, something funny happened. Huayna Capac, having run out of real garrison troops, was forced to defend with an Explorer:



Explorer-on-Explorer action!

And, with the peace treaty expiring and the Galleons arriving, it was time to start the last war:



A lone Christian missionary spread his faith to the Aztec empire and...



So now the only heathens left in the world were the Incas. And they were nice and contained in Chile. Looks like the game will be ending not with a capitulation but an annihilation.

Tokugawa, with his mainland colonies crushed and Kyoto threatened by Spanish Infantry, Conquistadors, and Cavalry, opted to kiss the ring:



So, in 1505, Huayna Capac was the final remaining holdout, under siege in his city of Cuzco. Incan Archers and Crossbowmen withstood constant Spanish gunfire, but held out. The last straw came when they came to be strafed by newly minted flying devil-machines. Huayna Capac tried to surrender, but his ignorance of the True Faith doomed him to destruction:



Peace settled over the globe at last:













As you can plainly see from that Score chart, this game was over a long time ago, but it was a fun way to put the final nail in the coffin. Thanks again for reading!

Entertaining read. I especially enjoyed this line:

"Kafka swooped in and tried to win the citizenry over with tales of existential angst"

200k plus win!

Thats huge!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

( wow nice one rev oats! i was shocked for a few minutes!)

Boy do I love posting this image:

Wow. Just wow. That's the highest score I've ever seen. Way to go! Wrapping up, what do you think the critical moments in the game were, and what helped you win the most?

EDIT: Just saw reverend oats' score. Still good, though.

Well, , I won't compare winning scores ( I have some higher than 50 k ) but all of us in that regard looks dwarfed by killercane 1 million HoF score

On here: well, the game was decided when Cyrus broke down . All the rest was mop up, including Monty

So, next leader ( Hint: see here )

It would be interesting having two religous leaders in a row with Saladin.
I'm thinking Asoka of India. Being stuck between the Chinese and Persians could be challanging.

Not a real conquest victory. There's a barb city left in Siberia. Sorry, you lose.

Fetch said:

Wow. Just wow. That's the highest score I've ever seen. Way to go! Wrapping up, what do you think the critical moments in the game were, and what helped you win the most?

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The crucial game deciding key point sealing his victory was in 3375 BC, when he warrior rushed Louis and Frederick.

Deffiently Huayna Capac. You've dominated the last three games so maybe its time for a challange.

Best. Kingoftheworld. Ever.

WIOOOOOOO!!!

Congratulations. You could have gotten a higher score had you warrior rushed Rome and Greece but that's ok as I wouldn't want to see things like that occur. Looking forward to the next game! And maybe a domination victory?

Huayna Capac would be awesome!