BOTM 34 Final Spoiler - Game Submitted or Abandoned

BOTM 34 Final Spoiler

Ahh, I have nightmares about players complaining that this game was too easy! Well, bring it one: how did you all win?

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1455AD culture victory, and I felt much better this time. Again I used Sushi, which was not very powerful in this map, but it did help on GA production and score as well.

Played it through quickly to the end; made some sloppy mistakes, nothing as bad as some past ones though, just the general not paying attention/goofing off, and it was fun. Dikes are utterly ridiculous of course in the late game but I only got then maybe a couple dozen turns out from just rolling through things, wasn't going for space race or anything.

It was a combined diplo/backdoor dom - I had vassaled three others, Monty at Friendly since thousands of years ago as we'd been the only Buddhists the whole time. It does continue to impress me how well the Monty AI does when he's supported economically - he was the tech leader for a bit even around the middle ages and with me trading a lot to him he was able to make gains against dual/tri wars with Toku, Hannibal, and Hatsheput all Hindus opposing him.



I just realized the above is probably too boring and I should spoiler it. Anyway, obviously an incredibly strong leader (and the very best part is that when we play as Willem, we don't have to look at his portrait !) and the game went well - I really do think it wasn't as hard as you made it out to be but that's ok. At the very least, I would have done something nasty - like encouraging the challenger save, and then the challenger save would do something like replace Vicky with Tokugawa and Joao with Montezuma (swap the places of the AI civs, that would have been fun. Joao might expand quite fast onto that empty land, and Toku/Monty neighbors would be awesome right?) As it stands I knew people would obviously have fun axerushing Vicky and glad so many players did well, otherwise just getting wonders (marble/stone handy) and easy expansion was also good.

So good game, we'll see how it turns out in the end.

I died shortly after 1AD, but know I know to make sure i have defenders or share a relegion with someone so they wont attack me

As noted in my 1AD spoiler, I settled 1SW or something like that, and axe-rushed Vicky to death, then proceeded to take barb cities towards Portugal. I kept everything... I usually do... bad habit. Anyhow, I didn't settle that fish site soon enough because I was worrying over city maintenance, and I did not get a culture bridge to Monte's continent until a bit after 1AD.

As stated, I was weighing whether to beeline Optics (thinking this is an astro-only map), or to get Joao Friendly for trades. Couldn't decide, so I did both. Trading with my Hindu AP-owning buddy Joao made us the two tech leaders. I had met Monte before Optics came in, but Optics gave me contact with all the AI long before Joao had contact, and gave my sea units +1 movement rate.


I settled 2 cities on Monte's continent, and was about to get 2 barb cities there when Monte took them with 24 units (I think it was knights and mace, while I was playing around with a half dozen cats and axe and swords still).

On my continent I had settled down to just south of the desert. Took another barb city on the southern penninsula but lost it to counterattack and then Joao took it.

Went cottage-crazy, and could keep my tech pace in parity with Joao to get enough trades to make it work. Only wonder I successfully built was the GLH, and this really helped a lot when I used Liberalism to get Astronomy. (Note, I tried for Collosus, and even whipped it with 2 turns left to make sure, but was shocked to learn it was built by Joao that same turn I whipped... not paying attention!)

Toku is at constant war... and eventually vassals Hatty. I have good relations with Hannibal, and than causes tension with Toku. After an age in WHEEORN (at 'pleased') I was fully expecting Monte to clean me off his continent... those two cities weren't good enough to justify investing a lot to defend them. I wasn't expecting Toku/Hatty to DOW me, though. Anyhow, I'm the only one with Astronomy, so it wasn't really a big deal.

I'm first to rifling, so I spank Monte and take that barb city that I wanted in the first place. A very nice city, Saxon. However, grens came along so I took peace for cash. Gave Toku some 3rd rate tech, too.

Joao was insulated from war, so his tech pace got too big. I was more concerned about his culture rate which was clearly going to become a problem down the road. I have other trading partners now anyhow, so I backstabb him with a big force of rifles (vs LB's at first, muskets at the end). Take 5 cities, but the best 2 of those face serious culture pressure, but at least I've taken down his 3rd and 4th culture cities.

I settled two islands... one with sheep and whale, later found oil. The other with horses and later oil. Far away and kind of crappy. good for watching Toku, maybe.

I can stay almost at tech pace with the new reduced Portugal... for a while. He was gobbling up all the wonders, though, and started pulling ahead. When I got Industrialism (read Tanks) I was tempted to wipe out the weaklings (which is everyone EXCEPT Joao, as they are all stuck at rifles still, but Joao had stolen Assembly Line). When Joao beat me to the Statue of Liberty by 1 lousy turn, I got a bunch of cash, and that sort of decided things. All those rifles preventing revolt in Coimbra became Infantry, all those trebs became cannons, and I built about 10 tanks with help of the whip.

I expected to easily go through another 5 cities then stall... but the war went well, Joao built cavaly and airships.. eventually a few airplanes until I pillaged his oil. But noting that could stop a proper industrial age army. I took it all. Tons and tons of wonders, and some very nice cities as well.

Meanwhile Toku attacks me again... takes Saxon which was crushing Aztec culturally, but in Japanese hands slowly but surely gets grinded to crap, culturally. I could'nt be bothered to worry about it at the time. If I get Joao, I win (eventually). And Monte had dogpiled, so with 3 cities left when Joao will capitulate I truly feared a vassalization to Aztec (but it didn't happen). Joao dead... sets the world technology back 50 years from the Modern back to the Industrial age... but as Toku was so fond of making me say.... So be it.

The only quest I bothered with was Overwhelm Doctrine, to build 3 carriers and 4 destroyers and 3 battleships and 9 fighters. I already had most of that stuff keeping the bad guys from my shores. +5 bonus t oharbors (and I had a LOT of harbors) was nice, but too late in the game to make a meaningful difference.

I lost one of the two islands before I realized I could use those airports to send some infantry and tanks there... too bad, this gave the bad guy team a source of oil... but I'm not sure how many they already had. Ho ho ho I've got tanks started being the motto of the day after that, so I think it was unfortunate. (But he he he... I'VE got MODERN ARMOR).

Anyhow... no more city losses for me. Didn't bother kicking their butts like they deserved... no... I just turtled and built a spaceship. No great date or score... but a win on Immortal is always a challenge for me, so I'm pleased. I do not think this game turned out any harder than a typical Immortal level game, either. However, I can imagine that with different AI-AI war successes, it could have been a real bother... either Hatty does well and becomes a culture/science MONSTER, or Monte clobbers Hannibal and proceeds to turn the world into a glowing sheet of glass. Or most likely... you wait to long to break Portigal's back, and then they have modern and unassailable units, so if you didn't figure a way to win faster than his culture victory, you're toast.


But in my game Hatty got stepped on early but kept a sizable vassaldom, Hannibal trading with me made it so he could hold off Toku a LONG time (he had Infantry when he capitulated to Toku's rifles, so it was a very costly war for Toku). Monte was in WHEEORN for almost the entire game but never quite could reach his target power (respective my power) to declare war. They wasted a lot of effort for basically pillaging my seafood... had no success with anything else. And Joao chased the feminine side of the tech tree while I chased the masculine side. Hint to Joao... just because you are Friendly with me doesn't mean I am going to be Friendly with you.

ByThis game was a comedy of errors that just kept getting worse and worse. By 1 AD, I had a decent start (not as good as C_63, Duckweed and others&#8230 with 6 cities, all settled peacefully. I decided to try for a diplo victory. Most of the AI were already too powerful and I didn’t want to spend too much time beefing up my non-existent army…

Plan A

The diplo situation looks pretty good. Joao, Victoria and I are all Hindu and loving each other. I built a bunch of missionaries and converted Hannibal to Hinduism as well. Montezuma is the clear population leader and is the only Buddhist on the planet (after Hannibal sees the Hindu light). I then start working on Tokugawa. He’s Friendly at +8 and I think I can get him to convert to Hinduism as well.

At about this point, my plans start to fall apart. Victoria founds Islam and converts, souring our relationship. She doesn’t like me enough, so cannot be bribed back into Hinduism. So I direct all of my EPP toward her and use espionage to get her back into Hinduism. Great!! But five turns later she converts back to Islam and I’ve just wasted over 1000 EPP.

In the mean time, Hannibal and Toku declare war on Hatty. I’m asked to join the war, so I do for the shared war diplo bonus. Hatty is small and weak, so I don’t need her votes anyway (famous last words). I never see a single battle and the war ends with Hatty vassalizing to Monty. Toku also vassalizes to Monty of his own choice. Monty is becoming a monster.

In addition, Victoria and Montezuma both go WHEOOHRN at about the same time. I’m sandwiched between them and a possible land target for both.

Plan B

If Victoria doesn’t want to play nice, I won’t either. I would prefer to be the aggressor, so I start building up my army. Victoria is the second in population. If I take all of her cities but one, I’ll be the largest civ. I can gift Victoria the UN and make her my opponent. Everyone hates Victoria and is either friendly or pleased with me (except for Hatty), so this should be cake walk.

Before my army is ready, I hear the war chimes and my heart stops. Whew. Montezuma just declared on Victoria. Toku and Hatty are on board too due to being Monty’s vassals. Three turns later, I decide to join the war against Victoria. I’m not really ready, but I want to take Victoria’s cities before Montezuma does.

Even on Immortal, the AI sucks at inter-continental warfare. Rather than seeing a green, yellow or red stack of doom, I see a few of Toku’s wounded units and the Aztec and Egyptian armies are nowhere to be found. It looks like I’ve jumped into a war with an enemy that has twice my power and an empire two times larger than mine. Time to buckle down; it’s game time!

The war goes slowly but I’m making steady progress. My airships are wounding the defenders and my Cuirassiers clean up. Once I learn Military Tradition and Rifling, I bring Cavalry into the war and things go much easier. I watch my population grow, but I’m not getting anywhere near Monty’s size. It’s going to be close, so I push on.

I finally get Victoria down to one city. I use my GE (100% odds from Pyramids GE points and an engineer specialist) to hurry the UN in the city just north of her last city. I revolt to Universal Suffrage, save up a ton of gold, and rush buy the UN.

On the next turn, I just barely beat Monty in the Secretary General vote. I get Joao and Hannibal’s votes and Monty gets Toku and Hatty’s votes. To end the war with Victoria, I finally give her back the city with the UN in it and wait. I check the relationship screen. Everyone still hates Victoria and is either Pleased or Friendly with me, even Hatty. This is going to be easy!! I almost break my arm when I pat myself on the back for a game well played.

I call the diplo vote. But wait, what’s this? The vote is between Monty and Victoria. For some silly reason, I thought I would be up against Victoria since I’m the Secretary General. But no, the vote is between Victoria (the owner of the UN) and Montezuma (the largest civ). I knew this but had somehow forgotten in the heat battle. I have a lot to learn about diplo victories. And I thought SGOTM 11 prepared me for this… My Fifth Element teammates should be proud... and happy that I'm on a different team for SGOTM-12.

Plan C

OK, time to take back the UN and finally put an end to Victoria. I have too many “We want to join our motherland!” crybabies in many of my cities. With a bit of work, I can get Toku and maybe even Hatty to vote for me instead of Monty. So, I get my army ready to take her last two cities but before I can declare, Victoria vassalizes to Joao. WTF. I don’t stand a chance against Joao at the moment. The last 50 turns have been focused on taking out Victoria, waiting for the city to come out of revolt, building the UN in it and growing my population. I had stopped teching, building infrastructure and units a long time ago. I am way behind in tech. Joao has a navy with destroyers. My navy consists of one galley (my only frigate lost a 98.4% battle against one of Victoria’s caravels).

Plan D

I’m behind in tech. I have ignored infrastructure in my cities for the last 100 turns. What can I do? Well, I recently captured a bunch of English cities. I have more cities than everyone other than Monty. I start building infrastructure in my cities. I work on getting my tech rate up. I use my army of workers… 6 to be exact since I never built any during my war with Victoria, 6 was more than enough to keep my initial 6 cities running, and I never captured a single worker from Victoria because she kept moving them south just a turn ahead of my advancing army… Where was I? Oh yes, my army of 6 workers started changing the silly improvements that Victoria had made in most of her cities. Fasten your seatbelts! We’re going to space, kids!!!

I claw my way up from last place on the score board. I finally learn a few techs that no one else has so that I can backfill techs that I don’t know yet. I become the tech leader. I am the second to build the Apollo program. I start building space ship parts. I am researching Fusion for the free GE (no other AI knows Computers of Fiber Optics yet, so the GE is in the bank). Things are looking great.

Then, I get my first lesson is Espionage. This is only my 5th or 6th BtS game and the first one that’s gone this late into the tech tree. I’ve never seen so much Murky Water (i.e. poisoned H2O), unhappy citizens, buildings lost, cities in revolt or techs stolen. One of my space ship parts, one turn from completion, was sabotaged and I have to start over on it. Vanilla was so much easier in this regard.

OK, I just spawned a Great Artist. Time to trigger my second Golden Age to speed up my last few space ship parts. Where did my free GE go? Where did my free GE go? Where did my free GE go? Where did my free GE go?

Holy crap!! Monty stole Computers and Fiber Optics in successive turns and beat me to Fusion and I didn’t even notice. With all of the other espionage and random event messages every turn, I stopped reading all of them about 100 turns ago in my eagerness to finish this game. If I lose, I have no one to blame but myself because I always start to get lazy late in the game.

Conclusion

It’s touch and go down the stretch, but I’m the first to complete my space ship with every single part and I launch it. I was expecting the flight to take about 5 turns, but it actually took 15 IIRC. That sounds like a long time. About five turns or so after I launch my ship, Monty and Hannibal launch theirs. I hope that the AI doesn’t get some bonus and beat me to Alpha Centauri.

In the end, I win the game in 1896 with a base score of 4007 and a final score of 44,964. I think this game was easier than a typical Immortal game. I’m surprised that I was able to pull out a win with the slowish start and all of the miscues in my game…

Mitchum: epic story and congrats on pulling out the win, sounded awesome and thanks for sharing.

Mitchum said:

Toku also vassalizes to Monty of his own choice.

Click to expand...

I propose this become the unofficial "motto" of this BOTM.

oh, and one last funny snippet I remember from my game. Barb city on the island near Toku built its own cavalry - have almost never ever seen a barb cavalry in my game. Especially interesting as a lot of the AI hadn't had rifling yet or at least not much before that, and definitely not military tradition (like Toku himself). But I took it with infantry (still had lbows in its city except for that one cav) when I was clearing up Toku's island settlements (see: Pokemon world vs. Japan map )

Earthling said:

Mitchum: epic story and congrats on pulling out the win, sounded awesome and thanks for sharing.

Click to expand...

Thanks! I'll take a win on Immortal any way I can get it. It sounds like your game had its share of drama too.

Domination 1285AD, Score 363k

Goal was fast(est) conquest. During the last turn (Hatche had capitulated - so all AIs were vassals) I gifted three cities away to drop below 64% landmass (I wanted to avoid a randomly chosen Domination victory). Hit enter and a small island city came out of revolt -> Domination victory with 64,31% land

The wars:
250AD Dow on Joao with Maces and Cats, later Knights
760AD Monty dow'ed me and some turns later my Curassiers rolled over him
1020AD Dow on Hannibal: A war with heavy losses. Bad tactical game from my side. Attacked hilled cities and did not capture them and 10 Cat can do harm even to a Cavalary stack.

1230AD: Toku
1265AD: Hatsche (and the Domination disaster)

**************************
An episode from around 760AD.
What is Monty's stack doing near the border of Maastrich? Guess he wants to assist me fighting off the barbs




Big thanks to the xOTM staff! Great and epic game for me!

^One trick to avoid domination (and still want those cities back for score) is to gift cities to the last AI and then completely wipe it out, all those cities should still in revolt and you won't exceed the land limit. Take a look of my BOTM29 result. I gift all Joao's cities to Izzy before DOW and recaptured them in the 1st turn, so those cities need extra turns to come out of revolt.

Sounds like a good idea! I hopefully learned my lesson for next time and have an eye on the revolting cities!

Retired 50BC
I made a terrific error when I rushed Victoria...I had 7 Axes mostly with city raider and attacked London 1100 BC or so. She hold of first turn of attack and had some archers left..3 i suppose. I had 4 attackers..she moved archer from nearby city and instead of me trying to get LND with 4 axes against 1 fresh 2 wounded I attacked the archer support she send and did not get the city (I got the fresh one archer though.)...the it went ALL WRONG..a rebuild force attacked another city. Got defenders down and my cityR +3 axe didnt kill 2,2 wounded archer in a 20 % culdef. city. aaaahh. Got the city eventualy but my latter attacks on 1pop LND were useles. well I met JAP and they had all the techs I could dream of. Anyway I retired..i am looking forward to replay if I manage to get victoria it might be a nice game!

Try to be faster with the axe rush. 1100 BC is late. I attacked before 2000BC - chopped the army out in a few rounds after connecting copper (and you could also use the whip).

To victory :


Overall, I think it could have been much faster. Maybe vassalizing Joao was a mistake and I should have conquered him all. Then there were shaky moves in the war against Montezuma.
Missing on the GLH was also a pity.

However, I'm very happy of this game I found both entertaining and educative. That's... the 2nd game I've completed in solo, so far... Which means I don't have much experience with the game after the classical age
As a matter of fact, I didn't manage very well my economy post 1A.D. I suffered plenty of and . I also made some small mistakes along the tech path. I also think I traded far too much with the AIs.
In retrospect, most of the game was spent in Caste System, which I enjoyed. Slavery was only use for the opening. I guess that's part of the reason why my gold buildings + courthouses took so long to set up.
On the strategic aspect, I lacked a dedicated GP farm besides Amsterdam. That would have gotten me GP control to trigger the 4th golden age.

^Slavery is by the most powerful civic. CS is weak without Phi trait and strong cities. Great Scientists do not help much if you can lead the tech without them, which is easy in immortal and below.

Duckweed said:

^Slavery is by the most powerful civic. CS is weak without Phi trait and strong cities. Great Scientists do not help much if you can lead the tech without them, which is easy in immortal and below.

Click to expand...

You are right, all the more so since I had little use for CS, seldom hiring more than 3 scientists outside golden ages. Call it a newbie mistake
I made a mistake not switching to slavery at the end of my 2nd golden age. Then I was affraid of the anarchy I would suffer.

Regarding Great Scientists...
I think I (partial-) bulbed Philo, Education, Printing Press and Chemistry...
Hmmm... and then I got stuck with Priests and Artists, unable to trigger a 3rd golden age... Saving a scientist for this would definitely have been useful.
What about the others ? Would you have settled them ?

Regarding the tech lead :
I'm not sure I would have kept it without bulbing. My research was very, very slow from 1AD to 1000AD. With better empire management, though, it could have been otherwise.

Um, what was I saying in the first spoiler post about this being an easier than Immortal game? Ah, pride cometh before the fall. I retired around 1400 after things had been very bad for quite awhile. Had a bit of bad luck but mostly made some bad decisions. Things were in pretty good shape to start, with Pyramids, TGL, Colossus, Great Library, etc. I had beelined to Engineering and assembled a nice force of trebs, maces, and Xbows to go after Vicky. A turn or two before I was going to DoW, Monty attacks me. I hoped I could hold him at the nice jungled choke point and carried on with my plans for Vicky. Probably not wise. I killed around 8 f her units in the first city without any losses to me, razed it, and moved on the second. Things continued to go well but then an AP vote came up to stop the war (Vicky, Joao, and I were Hindu). I should have defied--big mistake. I was ready to take it and continue to London but instead was forced into peace and lost momentum. While this was going on, Monte had broken through with wave after wave and relentlessly took my 3 cities over there one by one. After peace with Vicky I regrouped and took them back, but by then it was too late. I was still doing well in tech, and got to Liberalism first, and chose Astronomy for some reason. Dumb dumb dumb. I knew I'd lose the Colossus bonus but figured that Astro would let me reestablish trade routes (to get by Vicky and Monty) but everyone had recently changed to Mercantilism and I hadn't noticed. So all Astro did was lose me 1 commerce on all water tiles. Splendid. I continued on for awhile but things just went downhill.

Congrats to the winners, and thanks for entertaining reports! Maybe I'll go back to my pre-DoW save and take another shot at this.

Cultural Victory in 1852 for 46K. A mere 400 years behind Duckweed, who was clearly playing a different save from the rest of us. There's no other explanation

The critcal moment came as early as turn 7. My warrior had just spotted a lone English worker tilling the fields. Nobody else in sight - the opportunity was too good to resist. Worker steal! With trepidation, doubly so when my warrior landed next to London which 3 archers were guarding. And of course in BTS the worker doesn't get to escape in the same turn. So that plan failed. Or did it? 100 out of 100 human players would attack the warrior and recapture the worker. Vicky decided it was too risky to undefend her capital So a hasty retreat next turn and the extra worker came in very useful. Built up a big supply of axemen and attacked when the English had not hooked up their copper owing to worker shortage English wiped out by 750 BC. Though I now realise this was pretty slow as rushes go - it was more of a choke.

Anyway the extra territory to expand into is useful, Joao and I are both Hindu and best mates. Pop across to Monte's continent and start three cities but when he DOWS, as Monte inevitably does, I am in no position to defend these. Thankfully Monte's massive stacks get seasick easily and are reluctant to board ships Built the Sistine Chapel and one other wonder, chose Republic + Free Speech + Caste System (artists) + Mercantism + Pacifism. 8 GAs settled one bombed 5 in Utrecht 2 in Amsterdam. London made it to 75000 on its own. 3 GPs (all settled) and one GS (academy in Amsterdam). Switched sliders around about 1500AD and ran 80% culture 20% cash for much of the game.

Joao was the tech leader while Monte had the most land and the biggest army. But neither were anywhere near winning when 1852 came along.

Abandoned around 1AD

I joined the game for educational purposes; it was 2 levels above my zone of comfort (Prince/Monarch). My attempt to rush Victoria failed; I started it too early, when she already founded Hastings (next to the eastern copper). I razed it, and captured Nottingham, but lost about half of my stack in progress; she still had enough units to defend London and York, and wanted Nottingham back for peace. I could not continue the war, but signing peace on these conditions meant that I was left with two cities, one of them crappy, hopelessly behind all opponents, and without a good chance to recover

My mistakes:
1. I delayed the first settler until Amsterdam was at size 3. Knowing that Victoria was so close, I had to start expansion much earlier
2. I did not use the whip efficiently enough
3. I did not abandon the rush when it became clear I didn't start it in time, and didn't even consider not rushing

It's a pity that my first Civ4 GOTM ended like this, but I am looking forward to the next one (hopefully at an easier level )

Game date: 1865AD
Final score: 32851
Victory: Cultural

Whoa...I was really sweating this one at the end. It's always interesting to see how different these games go for each player with respect to the AI. Monty was an absolute monster this game. It apears Joao got pretty big fast for everyone. My VC date was fairly late but I'm pretty happy with the outcome considering a) I don't always win IMM games b) decided on cultural a bit late c) some unlucky losses early on to RNG that made me grind it out with England d) Hanny took my 9th crap city I built for temples

With Fast Willie, I expect to go for something like Space initially. It was until around the time I won Lib and I had the lay of the land that I decided to go Cultural.

I settled on the plains hill NW. I imagine of few folks did this. Not a bad cap at all but it kind of messed up a decent city N of that vicinity. Ran into Vicky quick. My warrior hit Woody II quickly so I scout the immediate continent fast and knew fairly soon that England must die! I teched and expanded decently early on, grabbing the copper and placing cities to the NW and South. I planned to go for Oracle and then Constr for cats to take out England. However, not surprising, Vicky sent a settler down to the marble site I was about to settle. At fairly high odds I decided to attack the archer with a nearby axe. However, as usual, my axe dies and now I'm at war with England without the element of surprise and no marble. I still went for Oracle but just barely lost it to Monty of all people.

My war with England was basically one of choking and attrition. Of course, all Vicky did was spam archers and an occasional settler. Eventually I wore her down but the war lasted well into the late BCs. Once finished and with her cities, I pretty much had this small continent covered. In fact, I can't recall settling iany more cities until later realizing I did not have 9 cities when I decided to go culture.

I continued scouting into Portugal and consider the possibility of taking Joao out, but I quickly realized that the fast expander had a lot of good land to expand to and he did exactly that very fast. As he found hindu and it had spread, I decided to adopt it and be friends. This actually proved to be a good thing later on as Joao built the AP and well was more than helpful as I will describe later.

My cap allowed fairly early access to send a galley (well galleys and later a tireme due to continuous death to barb galleys) east to meet all the AIs. This helped with trade routes and trades. I had built the GLH.
For much of the early to mid game after recovering from war, I maintained a good tech rate. London became my NE wonder whore city. I built MoM which was nice as well as Mids. However, I stayed in HR for quite sometime for the bonus with Port. I won Lib and took Nat for the Taj in London.

Meanwhile, Monty just became a beast. He took down and vassaled Toku and Hatty fairly early. I thought Hanny might be strong enough to hold out but he eventually capped to Monty as well. At least Monty's attention to his own continent prevented him from attacking me for a very long time. Oh...and befriending Monty was basically impossible as his religion Bud never spread to me at all.

I founded Conf and Tao and once I decided on Culture I went ahead and founded Islam too. I now had 5 religions and started spamming Mishes and building temples/cathedrals. All this was around 1000AD or thereabouts, so it was a very late push for culture. Also, I really didn't push the culture slider until quite a bit later as I wanted a few techs like Bio in place.

So Monty and his monster empire/vassals loomed large as a major obstacle to my cowardly victory. Of course, Monty goes into WHEOOHRN not long after capping Hanny. I'm quite worried, but at this point I have a slight military advantage (Monty is teching fairly decently at this point). HOwever, Monty decides to send his galleons and frigates to Joao. Whew. I stay out of this and just focus on my culture push.

Meanwhile, I'm able to trade with Hanny for MT. Did not bother teching MT since I never had horses the entire game. However, I did want the defensive pact option. Once Joao and Monty made peace I immediately pact up with Port. I was uncertain if this was the best move, but thought it might hold off Monty as Joao was starting to really grab a strong tech lead over everyone and had destroyers. (I had research at zero at this point focusing on culture).

Monty the psycho attacks Joao twice again while we have a defensive pact. Each time it seemed Monty dropped the bulk of his stack on me as opposed to Joao even though he officially DOW'd on Port. My airships, rifles and cannons easily took out whatever troops Monty landed on the first turn. Monty did have a huge navy of Frigs and SoLs. They did a lot of damage early but I eventually built some ironclads to take them out. What was really cool here is that Joao did a real nice job helping me out with his destroyers. I sued for peace with Monty each time and gave up a tech.

During one war, Hannibal snuck in a stack on my backside and took out a little crap city of mine that I plopped down next to Joao as a ninth city so I could build more cathedrals. I did get one temple built and thus one cathedral, but that was the end of that idea. Joao eventually took the city for himself.

So it came down to the final push for the cultural win. Amsterdam and London hit Legendary about the same time, but my third city Rotterdam (my HE city) down south lagged a bit behind. Luckily I continued spitting out a couple of GAs in London to help push Rotterdam over the top. The final GA bomb took Rotterdom from around 69000 right to Legendary in one turn. Meanwhile, I was sweating big time another attack by Monty on either me or Joao, but it never came. I'm sure it would have come if delayed much longer and the next war would likely not have gone well with Monty's destroyers/tranports - although I did have arty at this point.

The main competition other than Monty taking over the world, was Joao was starting to build space parts. However, he only had a few casings built when I won the game. Monty was definitely a big factor in my time. The wars were tough and caused me to focus less on culture and more on survival. Probably a difference of at least 50 years or so. If I had to do it over I would have put more effort into weaken Monty early on. Hannibal and Hatty would not have been a problem this game and...well...Toku just seemed very nerfed the entire game - he was never a factor.