After winning my first G&K King difficulty match as the Byzantine by a hair.
(I basically had to reload a save.. maybe 20 times. Had to do a surgical military strike on one of the runaways that had an entire island fitting 8 cities on a pangaea map. (Just my luck. ._.))
I figured I'd try my luck and go for arguably the hardest victory condition, culture.
Took a random civilization and ended up with Gandhi, 8 civilizations in total on the europe map. I started around the 'greek' area. China was east of me, Montezuma and the Celts north. Pacal to the southwest and the Danes, Ottomans and Rome to my north west.
Applying what I learned from my previous match I made 3 archers in a short amount of time and upgraded them to composites when I could. For the longest time I had nothing but peace while the Celts and the Ottomans died.
Did my best to maintain my science but when I checked the demographics somewhere in the modern era I was the last in literacy (about 6% behind). Although I was the only one in the modern era (kind of rushed getting Radio).
Had three cities because happiness was an issue with cities taking 6 happiness on founding as Gandhi, only had 3 resources nearby. Just my luck.
Then it happened, Montezuma, the one that ruined the Celts, settled nearby, went to war and used not 1 but 2 great generals to steal my land and had 3 more generals hanging around that I managed to kill/scare away. Using 3 crossbowmen and a general of my own to steal a citadel (giving me 2) I barely held him at bay.
Then China, the civ that was allied to me for the entire duration of the game declared war on me and rushed a bazillion riflemen and cannons to kill me.
Never fought a 2 front war like this, it was intense and I kept killing wave after wave after wave of Chinese forces. At one point her military was just as small as mine but she never wanted peace. She always said, your full capitulation sounds like a good plan.
Montezuma ended up wasting all his troops on the northern front and went to peace but China never stopped. She was the tech lead and showed it, I had 1 logistic crossbowman and 1 logistic + range gatling gun (which was inside a strength 72 city). Together with 2 + range and rank 2 bombard frigates on the coast (she had to funnel her troops through a 4 tile strech of land with her frigates on the other side) but then she got planes, killed my frigates and crossbowmen and the city was lost in just 2 turns.
I realize I lost because China was a runaway in tech (Rome was also quite the runaway) and got air superiority but could I have handled things differently? I only had 3 lux resources, 4 if you count the double crabs with no other resources even remotely nearby. I could not get more than 3 cities out even with all happiness buildings.
Could not even puppet cities due to the double unhappiness it seemed as I always was running around 3-4 positive happiness).
Bad luck? Really bad luck? I would post pictures but I kind of.. got pretty mad and brute deleted the entire save folder, spend my entire free afternoon on that match just to get brushed aside.
EDIT: I think I can actually pull the saves back from my bin and show some pictures but it'll have to wait until after nap time.
Fun fact, it was on Epic speed and somehow I managed to make my cities grow faster than my religious pressure could flip them. Had to manually spread it.
(I basically had to reload a save.. maybe 20 times. Had to do a surgical military strike on one of the runaways that had an entire island fitting 8 cities on a pangaea map. (Just my luck. ._.))
I figured I'd try my luck and go for arguably the hardest victory condition, culture.
Took a random civilization and ended up with Gandhi, 8 civilizations in total on the europe map. I started around the 'greek' area. China was east of me, Montezuma and the Celts north. Pacal to the southwest and the Danes, Ottomans and Rome to my north west.
Applying what I learned from my previous match I made 3 archers in a short amount of time and upgraded them to composites when I could. For the longest time I had nothing but peace while the Celts and the Ottomans died.
Did my best to maintain my science but when I checked the demographics somewhere in the modern era I was the last in literacy (about 6% behind). Although I was the only one in the modern era (kind of rushed getting Radio).
Had three cities because happiness was an issue with cities taking 6 happiness on founding as Gandhi, only had 3 resources nearby. Just my luck.
Then it happened, Montezuma, the one that ruined the Celts, settled nearby, went to war and used not 1 but 2 great generals to steal my land and had 3 more generals hanging around that I managed to kill/scare away. Using 3 crossbowmen and a general of my own to steal a citadel (giving me 2) I barely held him at bay.
Then China, the civ that was allied to me for the entire duration of the game declared war on me and rushed a bazillion riflemen and cannons to kill me.
Never fought a 2 front war like this, it was intense and I kept killing wave after wave after wave of Chinese forces. At one point her military was just as small as mine but she never wanted peace. She always said, your full capitulation sounds like a good plan.
Montezuma ended up wasting all his troops on the northern front and went to peace but China never stopped. She was the tech lead and showed it, I had 1 logistic crossbowman and 1 logistic + range gatling gun (which was inside a strength 72 city). Together with 2 + range and rank 2 bombard frigates on the coast (she had to funnel her troops through a 4 tile strech of land with her frigates on the other side) but then she got planes, killed my frigates and crossbowmen and the city was lost in just 2 turns.
I realize I lost because China was a runaway in tech (Rome was also quite the runaway) and got air superiority but could I have handled things differently? I only had 3 lux resources, 4 if you count the double crabs with no other resources even remotely nearby. I could not get more than 3 cities out even with all happiness buildings.
Could not even puppet cities due to the double unhappiness it seemed as I always was running around 3-4 positive happiness).
Bad luck? Really bad luck? I would post pictures but I kind of.. got pretty mad and brute deleted the entire save folder, spend my entire free afternoon on that match just to get brushed aside.
EDIT: I think I can actually pull the saves back from my bin and show some pictures but it'll have to wait until after nap time.
Fun fact, it was on Epic speed and somehow I managed to make my cities grow faster than my religious pressure could flip them. Had to manually spread it.
