Earth 18 civs. Inca conquest?

dohh said:

Soup, did You interact somehow, or what did keep Chinese so weak? In 9 games of 10 they go far ahead of everybody else at this scenario...Im very surprised that Chinese are not about to end this game by this time.

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The Chinese were doing ok when I met them (though not as well as the Arabians), until I bribed them to attack the Persians. They were about similar in score and the Chinese had one peaces vassal (Japan) while Persia had two (Russia and Mongolia), so I thought it would be a great away to keep them occupied for a long time.

What happened instead was that the Chinese got absolutely destroyed, losing their cities in rapid succession, a couple to Persia and Mongolia, about four to Russia, and even one to Japan, who switched sides halfway through. I donated them assembly line after they lost the first two, and even though none of their enemies had it it didn't seem to help them much. They ended up capitulating to Persia, while Russia broke free and became a new significant power using Chinese lands.

The reason Persia and Arabia were in such strong positions in the first place is probably because they took out India early on - there are only three cities with Indian names in my world, with two of them being Persian and one Arabian. I'm guessing that these things were mostly caused by the aggressive AI setting.

My game is won. Immortal, epic, aggressive AI, conquest in 1915 AD.

I was pretty pleased with my early game, but the conquest wasn't terribly efficient - a better player could have this done much sooner. In the end, the AI killed 3 civs quite early in the game (france, india & greece), I killed 3 (england in 1752, spain in 1790 and america in 1902) and I vassalized the other 11 (1854 rome - 1862 germany - 1870 mali - 1883 arabia & egypt - 1891 russia - 1895 persia, china & japan - 1904 mongolia - 1914 aztec). I had to give quite a lot of land back to prevent going over the domination limit before I got all of them, but I still held all of South-America, most of Europe (not Scandinavia or the easternmost part) and the Middle East.

My strategy came down to:
- beeline sailing to build the second city to the south on the right side of the mountains
- ignore all early wonders - the first one I tried for but missed was the kremlin, the first I got was the pentagon
- expand as fast as the economy allowed while beelining to optics, ignoring all other techs except basic worker techs and writing. I'm glad I didn't go for liberalism, as that went at 560 AD, and I only got to optics in about 900 AD.
- use one great scientist on an academy in my moved capital, and one to bulb half of astronomy
- trade optics (nearly all civs had it already) and astronomy (only a few beat me to that) for all of the important economic stuff I missed (currency, civil service, etc.), then beeline to communism, democracy and steam power to get the most out of all of the riverside land with cottages, watermills and levees
- invade with marines/tanks/battleships/carriers/bombers
- throw everything into land units, and gradually conquer the old world, then a quick raid on montezuma right at the end

My main mistakes that I noticed were building the internet far too late, when it would have given me much more if I built it right away, and getting completely surprised by a DoW from Cyrus that led to about 100 outdated units running through my recently conquered cities, capturing two and threatening two others.

I ended up killed about 1400 units while losing ~250. None of the great generals I got had a name, probably because the AI had already used up all available names before I ever went to war. I had to defy the UN several times, both on peace deals and on switching to environmentalism, but by that time I had captured all the modern happiness wonders, so I never needed more than 30% on the culture slider.

Soupturtle, did you only have two GP's for the whole game?

After long pause I had time to play Civ IV BTS again. I have been playing on monarch, normal speed, other settings default and achived domination by 2011. I know this is not s brilliant performance but I'm casual player.
I started the warmongering at 1886 (turn 313/500) by invading Monty with Infantery and tanks. I underestimated him a little and the war with Monty took longer than I expected. During war with Monty I researched got The Internet which gave me many technologies, and I researched several military technologies myself.
I invaded the Old Word in 1958 (378/500). I started the invasion in London and Paris (both French by that time) in one turn. The only military technology I was missing by that time was Stealth. Louis XIV was vasal of China (Arabians, Malinese, Egyptyans were vasals of China to), so I conquered all his cities in Europe, paid several hunderds of gold for peace with China and continued conquering other civilisations (Russians + vasal Germany). I didn't have to DoW on Russia, they attacked me during war with France. It hadn't complicated my game. I planned to pay for peace with china after defeating France anyway. Romans became my vasals voluntarily. I continued to Perisa + vasal Mongols. I only fought till the civilisations were willing to capitulate. Only in war with Russia I fought few extra more turns to get better position for conquered cities. After conquering Persians I attacked China and its vasals. I conquered all chinese cities in Asian mainland (they had some extra cities on islands, in Africa, and in the Middle east and in Australia) During the war Arabians became free state again and when I captured several of their cities, they capitulated. After their capitulation I achived domination victory.

My wars in Europe/Asia involved combination of various stretegies. Sometimes nukes + gunships + paratroopers to take cities instantly, sometimes advancemend of stacks composed of various units, sometimes nukes to weaken units in city.
I also had to use some Space ship parts sabotage to prevent China from achiving space race victory.