Congratulations Ali! I bet that was an exciting finish. It must be a little scary to think all your efforts might be wasted if the Chinese get there first.
I wrote the following lengthy note to Grigor before I noticed your post...
Grigor - Great game ! Sounds like you went through the tech tree faster than anybody and it paid off. I was pretty sure that approach was possible, but it's nice to see you did it. Did you use any of the very advanced tech (bombers? armor? missiles? etc)
I am not used to advanced govts, such as fundy, and didn't really consider celebrating... was that mainly for better delivery bonuses? But I always had enough gold, and usually had enough tech (or so I thought). Did you build SoL mainly to get to Fundy faster, or did you use it to switch govts a few times? BTW - could you explain the terms "real fundy" and "soft fundy"?
Getting Nav so early must have helped. You didn't mention which wonders you built (Mag's? MPE? STWA?).
"But I sent a freight and two elephants - and because I neglected to send a Settler with them, I made no colony in the Phillipines, Japan or Hawaii. That was a mistake which cost many turns at the end."
I made 4 colonies there, which was overkill. But you made a ship chain to China, for trade, so why did you still need a colony? If the ships were transports, I suppose one load would be enough to take a Chinese city easily. Probably better than colonies (unless making the chain was the problem...).
"I waited until my army of cavalry and cannons was at size 20 before trying to conquer Cairo. I lost a lot of units in Cairo, but after the Pyramids, everything started to roll. Bribing Partisns was really helpful. "
Did you have spies by then? They are great at taking down walls cheaply... roughly 2 spies per city was enough IIRC. Without walls, I doubt you'd need such a large army. Though I think I was using Artillery by the time I got to Cairo.
Just curious - was your growing army within sight of Cairo during the build-up? [I have an untested theory that the AI is smart enough to match an offensive build-up with a defensive build-up]. I don't recall bribing many partisans, but it sounds like a great idea; they were quite a nuisance in my game.
"Naval stuff turned out to be largely irrelevant ...." - Same for me.
"In the end, I rolled over all the last three civs in 2 turns each, using partisans and spies for ZoC issues and engineers to flash railroads where there were gaps. "
Well, that's pretty fast! I assume your main attacking unit was the howitzer at that point? Yeah, I guess those + engineers must have been pretty awesome.
"I can't imagine doing this scenario the LaFayette way - without city bribing - I got in lots of trouble and had to buy my way out several times."
IIRC - the two major AI civs in my game were Demo's, so I couldn't bribe them. You were lucky if you didn't face any Demo's !
Well, I would like to see a few of your saves, if you don't mind sending them by email. I am willing to give/get saves with anyone interested (of course, you have to submit your game to the GOTM staff first). Grigor, if you don't want to bother with sending the saves, could you provide some stats after 50 years and 80 years (see pages 1-3 of this thread) ?
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