Results (and recounts!) from Mysterio10000's 1st PB Game!

Mysterio10000's 1st PB game has concluded! The game started on January 16, 2006, and ended February 26, 2006, and was played by the following 6 human players (no AI)...

Vindicator (that would be me) (original player)
Corossol (original player)
BrutalusMaximus (original player)
HitAnyKey (original player)
bkelly1984 (joined ~ Jan. 27 to replace another player)
Funyans (joined ~ Feb. 2 to replace another player)

...with the following settings...

Human Players: 4 min./6 max.
AI Players: 2 max./0 min.
Map: Terra
Size: Standard
Climate: Temperate
Sea Level: Medium
Era: Ancient
Speed: Quick
Turn Timer: 12 hours
Simultaneous Turns: On
Take Over AI: On
No Technology Trading: On
No Cheating: On

When the smoke settled and the world was no longer being ravaged, Corossol stood head and shoulders above us all with a final score of 4471. The remaining order of finish was:

BrutalusMaximus - 2738
HitAnyKey - 2598
Vindicator - 2491
bkelly1984 - 1219
Funyans - 858

Congrats to Corossol on a dominating victory!

I'm sure Cor, Brut, and HAK would not hesitate in joining me in thanking BK and Fun for joining the game and playing it to completion when the other two original players were unable to meet our session schedule. They took over not-so-well-off civs, but gave it their best. We appreciate your strategic skills, your dedication to the game, and--most of all--the entertaining conversations we've shared! Thanks, guys!

With the unfortunate exception of BK, the other 4 players will be joining me for my 2nd PB game. I'll be posting details on Mysterio10000's 2nd PB Game shortly in a new thread, so watch for it!

Also, watch this thread for stories from some of the players as they recount some of the memorable moments of our last game!

Mysterio10000 said:

When the smoke settled and the world was no longer being ravaged, Corossol stood head and shoulders above us all with a final score of 4471. The remaining order of finish was:

BrutalusMaximus - 2738
HitAnyKey - 2598
Vindicator - 2491
bkelly1984 - 1219
Funyans - 858

Click to expand...

And with my glorious skill and expertise and powerful strokes to might, I was able to battle my way up from being dead last for a large portion of them game to obtaining the 3rd place position.

I started out with the worst location of the whole group, and still only had 2 cities when all the rest of the Civ's had a minimum of 5. After a little bit of time, due to obsene amount of wonders I built in my capital (Hamunaptra), it was the #1 city for all the times except for brief periods when I had to Whip my citizens to rush something and then it would only take a few more population growths for it to take back the lead spot. It also ended with the highest culture rating of any city on the world.

I may not have been the first to circumnavigate the world (Damn Brutalus beat me by like 3 turns), but I was the first to settle the New World. And I would have had an even greater advantage if the damnable English (ie. Brutalus) didn't land 4 Redcoats on the main content and take every single Barb city with no resistance.

The first battles of the Mali empire were against the Greeks, the greatest successes were when we captured Athens and Thermopolyae with the help of the Arabians (Vindicator) who took Sparta. This pushed the Greeks off the main Old World (leaving them on some smaller islands). It wasn't until many years later that the Greeks launched an assault and took back Therm & Athens, but only to hold them for a few more years before the Mali and Arabians launched another attack and razed both cities to the ground.

Many more battles ensued later on between the English and the Mali, with a few city losses and regains, but overall the wars between them didn't have much affect on each other. Even Japan in it's weakend state after building a city on the New World tried to attack the Mali, but were immediately crushed and the city they built taken.

In the end game, during the final fight for the second place spot the English pulled further ahead of the Mali (who had closed the point gap to less than 50) by completing a couple wonders and some other stuff. In an effort to close the gap, in the last years of the game, the Mali moved in on the new capital of the Greeks and conquered it and the other city that was on the same island. The English also took one city from the Mali, and neither was able to change the score enough to make a difference.

This is the tale of the Mali Empire, who made a glorious rise through the ages and fought to the very end.....

The mighty Russian Empire was off to a roaring start, settling Moscow near the junction of what would turn out to be the two longest rivers of the continent. A "Source of Horse" was found at the city gates and we learned to tame the wild beasts to pull our Chariots, as the other civilizations took the bourgeois path of religion.

After founding a few cities we found the English to the West, the Japanese to the East, and the Arabians to to the North. The Mali were spotted across a gulf to the northwest, and the Greeks were nowhere to be seen. Most fearsome of all neighbours was aggressive Japan, within reach of horses and copper. Despite our quick expansion, we did not find a single luxury resource we could exploit before Calendars, and without Great Wonders or even a religion to call their own, the overworked peasants were growing restless.

By 1150 AD the entire Old World was settled, and the thoughts of everyone shifted to expansion through reaching the fabled New World - or through warfare in the Old. Russia's rivals were ideally suited to maritime travel, being located at the edges of the continent or among an maze-like series of peninsulae to the north. Our own central position was unusual: with all strategic city spots being located inland, we had no seaport to speak of except an improductive desert outpost near the southern Japanese border. So land-based had been the strategy, that on the path to Calendar we had discovered Mathematics before Fishing.

The discovery of Calendar enabled us to exploit the luxury resources and support larger populations. We had also been able to make a last-minute grab for Taoism. However it was to our great anger that Japanese cultural expansion stole our seaside Incense plantation, at the same time as a coup d'état saw a peaceful Ehtwal replaced by an aggressive Tokugawa. As Mr. T was busy reinforcing his predecessor's tiny garrisons, we decided it was time to act. After consulting with the other nations on the suitability of this action, we struck in 1275 AD, intending for a Short Victorious War (tm).

Continued in Part II...

With a host of Horse Archers and Crossbowmen we simultaneously attacked the southern port of Tokyo and the northen port of Satsuma, expecting to take and hold them until peace could be forced. We were much surprised at our own success as both cities fell quickly, and the path to more conquest lay before us. Unable to resist we besieged the capital of Kyoto, bringing catapults and reinforcements, and once that fell we attacked more cities, gaining control of the Pyramids in the process. Had we been more thoughtful in our enthusiasm we might have heeded the rumors of discontent from the other nations as they watched Russia increase her power.

Disaster struck in 1610 AD as England, with expansionnist designs of her own, declared war and moved en masse on the lightly-defended western front with hordes of Knights, Macemen, Pikemen and Catapults. It was a scramble to make peace with the remains of Japan and adopt a slavery-driven oppressive Police State which was somehow enabled by the Pyramids (don't ask). We mounted a desperate defense as the countryside around Moscow and Novgorod was pillaged and burned, managing to save the cities themselves. The completion of a Heroic Epic in St. Petersburg, as well as the discovery of Gunpowder, enabled us to repel the assault when suddenly, England's co-conspirators Arabia and Greece leapt into action and invaded from the north. It was 1775 AD, and the war was just beginning.

As more and more of the war production was being concentrated in St.Petersburg, it became obvious that it, more than England-besieged Moscow, was the city to protect. Taking advantage of the northern invaders' coordination difficulties and vocal disputes, we sharpened our pikes and repelled the Camel Archers and War Elephants from the countryside. With the Gunpowder armaments race mounting, we also managed to launch a counter-attack in English territory, with good hope of capturing a border city. Those plans were thwarted when a Redcoat suddenly appeared in Canterbury (we later learned of Arabian financial support) and instantly killed one of our troops. A few turns later several more appeared, dispatching our entire force with ease.

It was back to the drawing boards and several mistakes were made, owing to newbiness in the mid-to-late game experience. Rifling was researched instead of Chemistry, and the new Riflemen were slaughtered by Redcoats who were now approching Moscow in ever-increasing numbers. Then when Grenadiers finally appeared, many were lost on defense before realizing that their anti-Rifleman bonus applied only when attacking (duh). Although they proved efective at guerilla warfare against pillaging bands, they were unable to prevent the tragic fall of Moscow at the hands of a dozen Redcoats in 1855 AD.

The 19th century was truly a dark time for the Russian Empire. Our only hope was to protect St.Petersburg which, perhaps unbeknowst to the enemy, had acted as Russia's true capital for some time. Riflemen, useless in the south, had proved effective at repelling the northern invaders and forcing peace with Arabia in 1830 AD. The seeds of discontent sown between Arabia and Greece bore fruit a few years later when the Green Crescent, assisted by Mali, declared war on her former ally. With that problem out of the way and the struggle with England in full focus, production was now switched to newly-discovered Cossacks although there were serious doubts about their viabilty against the Redcoats.

Abandoning all attempts to retake Moscow yet hoping that the ennemy still saw it as a priority, in 1930 AD we formed a stack of Cannon, Grenadiers and Cossacks to charge a fortified hill position overlooking Canterbury. Suffering heavy losses on the way, we came down on the city and captured it, foolishly thinking our cavalry could hold it. The English re-took it the same year and we found our force decimated and reduced to a single half-dead Grenadier against a full-health Redcoat fortified in the city. "For the Яevolutioи!", he screamed as he suicide-bombed the city with 5% odds... and succeeded. Our officers looked in utter disbelief as Canterbury exploded.

With both sides exhausted and the war-weary English troops bottled up in a culture-choked Moscow, Russia and England finally made peace in 1936 AD, after more than 300 years of war. Both sides immediately set to work on repairing the border infrastructure and fortifying hill positions in prevision of the next conflict. Newcastle was founded on a hilltop next to the ruins of Canterbury, while two Russian cities were built directly on the border. The reason for this was that at the end of the war, the very hill we charged earlier was found to contain coal deposits, and none of these appeared anywere in Russia's continent-wide empire. It was hoped that the fall of Canterbury would put the coal within our reach but London's borders held fast, even when we culture-bombed our new cities. We had to find a solution before the enemy discovered Steam Power.

Concluded in Part III...

While Russia was occupied with war, other nations had not been idle. Arabia and Mali had expelled the Greeks out of the mainland and into the northern archipelago. As we later learned from Mali, the New World was being colonized first by Mali themselves and then (from barbarians at gunpoint) by England. Funyans, who courageously replaced the disgraced Tokugawa, eventually built one city at the northwest tip of the New World, now fully occupied. During that whole time Russia had not built a single ship, not even a Galley. The ports taken from Japan had turned out to be improductive plains and jungles.

As the Industrial Age wore on, the Russian-English frontier became a solid line of fortifications, with Machine Guns on every single border tile. As a new conflict with Russia would degenerate into bloody trench warfare, England was now eyeing the Malian lands for expansion, at home and abroad. To ensure Russian neutrality, they signed a defensive pact and traded one of their sources of coal. Mali and Arabia had a pact of their own, and soon Greece and Japan had one as well. It was an eerie feeling of calm before the storm.

It hit the fan in 1988 when England attacked Mali's capital, across the narrow channel that separated the two nations. It was a heartbreaking sight to watch the rampaging English besiege the world's greatest cultural city, chock-full of Wonders and art and niceness. Luckily we Russians, who once again had showed a strange sense of priorities by researching Combustion before Compass, had finally built the world's first oil-powered navy. Moving a Destroyer and Transport that had been sitting out of both nations' sightlines, we bargained with Mali for them to become our new Coal supplier, and intercepted England's Infantry attack force using Amphibious-promoted Cossacks. This technically caused war with England but both sides had an unspoken agreement not to breach the ground lines.

Greece, seeing an opportunity to retake their ancestral lands, attacked a weakened Mali in the north, taking back Thermopylae and Athens. Mali made peace with England at the same time as we discovered Industrialism. Wasting no time, we produced a group of Tanks and broke through the English lines in 2000 AD before they get the chance to build their own armor. With only 50 turns to go, we had to keep the pressure on to prevent the English from catching up, either through invading us or another nation. But shortly after the assault began came the Day Russia Went Dark.

You will remember that throughout the course of the game we had relied on external sources (most recently Mali) for our coal, and that altough most railroading was completed we had come to depend on more than a dozen Coal Plants for production which we had more or less taken for granted. But when the deal with Mali was suddenly canceled, the Russian administration was thrown into chaos. Keeping a cool composure our ambassador started discussing with theirs about maybe it would be nice to keep trading the coal a few more years until we can get some from conquered English lands. It appeared that Mali had not fully realized that they had just pulled the plug on 50% of our industrial production and we managed to offer a generous deal before the consequences of this would be fully digested by the other side. Breathing a sight of relief and fearing that the other nations would learn of and take advantage of this incident, we went back to war.

We made the same mistake as before by capturing a city (Coventry on the shore of the English-Mali channel) and failing to hold it, as damaged Tanks are surprisingly vulnerable to infantry. History repeated itself as a second blitz, supplied through fortified hilltops taken from the enemy, managed to destroy the city for good. England then began to produce tanks of her own but despite their skillfull assaults on weakened Russian divisions, sheer numbers ensured that the tide of the battle remained in favor of the invader. By the time Bombers and Gunships entered the scene the war was basically over and England evacuated to the New World in 2024 AD. With Russia's rankings position secured, we immediatly made peace.

The last few years were uneventful from our point of view, as we built aircraft carriers to pass the time and look at the cute circling planes. The real action was between England, Mali and Arabia (the latter two having expelled Greece once again), as each struggled to preserve their hard-earned positions to the bitter end; England especially had much at stake, having dropped in score to a mere hundred above Mali. In the end, everyone managed to hold on to their rankings and in 2050, a good game concluded.

I join Vin in congratulating everyone for a fun and exciting game and look forward to the next.