Only built 1 wonder: Great wall. Barbs annoy me. But on marathon, more so. On an island all to ourselves but with galley access to the AIs? I'm just going to make it. I could go GLH but then I'd have to exert actual effort in this game and that's a big no no.
After Gwall I rexed. You see, if you go 1N as suggested, you get 2 gems. 2 gems with ORG/EXP means it doesn't take rocket science or an excel spreadsheet to think of what one might do next.
I easily outexpanded the AI and blocked off my entire island. The problem with the island nonsense is that war is harder. Well it would be on not marathon.
Here's some 1 AD dealies ----> i constantly dow'd asoka in this because gilga and cathy liked doing that, and it was good for diplo. Between gwall and just using gilgamesh/cathy for diplo I had 100% defense militarily and teched in peace:
Whoa I can see the AI cities. This is the magic "boat scout across the channel in a galley, unload it and press "e" trick.
I eventually got in on the action maces/cats vs archers vs asoka but only got 2 cities before he capped to gilgamesh. Now, normally that would really piss me off and I'd be SoL with super friendly hindu block getting each others back. But, no. We have cathy, after all.
This was actually a kind of hard war. I lost both cities I took from india but thanks to Gwall settled spy and focus on gilga a long time in advance I spyraped all his defenses and took him down. Eventually after taking his major cities I left him 2 cities next to cathy.
Why would I do this? Because of broken vassal mechanics. IIRC on standard sharing 8 tiles with gilga means when i dow cathy, she's a "land target" for gilgamesh, greatly reducing the effort needed to make her capitulate. Realistic, i know right.
So as always cuirassers and spies on cathy.
I got away from TMIT play and went with some micro ---> with caste/guilds I started workshopping everything on this new landmass. FP in uruk, and the new cities churned more cuirassers damned fast. Cathy was actually willing to capitulate before I to the last 5 cities to the north (note, if not for the "land target" rule, this wouldn't have been true ----> this is why I went up the western coast). Yes, I abused the #@!$%ing hell out of vassal mechanics in this game. Really bad.
By the way. The entirety of my forces crossed the channel in 3 galleys. That's right. I waged this entire war using 3 galleys to shuttle troops. Having a 1 tile channel makes it really easy though. They're not even vulnerable, and the lost travel time is minimal -----> for war purposes after taking gilga's first city way back when I might as well have been on the same land for troop move purposes (although until state property I had to use FP and other standard tricks to keep expenses under control).
I also punted india off teh continent and capitulated him. Gilga and india are down to <3 cities so can't win anything. Cathy is not but all 3 of her major cities are in my hands and I'm not giving them back. Next up: Izzy. Izzy didn't have gunpowder and I had cavalry and physics. This makes it really, really easy. Any significance longbows have go away when reduced to 4.8 str.
I took 2 of her island cities, madrid and other select culture nonsense potentials, and capitulation.
I was content to camp but figured what the heck and slapped Zara too after a while:
MG's did kind of ok but he was sadly outnumbered and the airships only got intercepted once (plus 2 of the cities I took were coastal and could be bombarded to 0. 14.4 str MGs aren't great vs cavalry, especially when theres over 30 cavalry and 4 of those total).
After that I just went tech crazy again. I put all cities on auto build and hit end turn a lot but as I said it was getting frustrating. I'd have to get rid of hatty's thebes/memphis/alexandria around 1950 AD or so so that she doesn't win culture. She's got the slider at 80% for it. The reason I didn't attack her as of 1875 is that I want her to try culture ----> less tech headache. Once she's close run over there and burn it and now she can't win culture OR space because she had her thumb up her tech butt that whole time.
Ok, now to refute the arguments that vassals are a bad idea for this game, I show the 1875 screenshots when I quit:
Hatty needs the mid 1950s to win or so. Of course I will just get the modern culture wonders, in my hemmer cities, to keep them away from anyone else.
Here's Izzy's new "capitol" as of 1875:
It's just under 15k. Making less than 70 CPt. In other words, this city, one of the best any of my vassals has, is on pace to be less than 1/3 of the way to legendary in the 600 or so turns before the game ends. I mean, you can try, but I don't think you'd do a very good job convincing anyone that such a position will allow a monarch AI to get THREE cities to legendary before 2050, let alone 2150. So no worries there.
Ok, so what about space?
Yeah. Right. Space.
Of course, you never know. Maybe they'd be able to reach it. Except that I have enough EP that I could sabotage a part every single turn if I ran the slider. Actually, they'd need to get the techs first. As you can see, they're a long, long way off and most of them are badly crippled. They could trade except for pretty much the whole world other than the culture whore is crippled this way...and researching what I tell them to research
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So again, maybe if I were letting my cat step on the enter key 600 times while I slept I might maybe lose space but probably not.
Obviously vassals can't win conquest/domination/time. Hatty built the UN. I utterly control it. no diplo. The AP is mine and I have controlling votes...so no dice there either for the AI.
Oh yeah, one more thing. When the time DOES come for hatty to have her capitol and 2 other culture cities razz'd to hell, I might just have the firepower to pull it off
:
Considering I already have every single tech in the game.
So, since just writing this up is a fraction of the time it'd take to ultimately win an easy time victory, I'm just posting this now. Hell, I'll post the save if someone feels like hitting end turn about 400 times, burning 3 cities (maybe gifting one to zara to stay under dom) with modern armor and jet fighters vs infantry, then hitting end turn 200 more times or so. Have fun.
. I didn't actually RETIRE (Actually, I saved it like I hear normal people do when they end sessions).
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and trading town
