Featured Game 1 Spoiler thread #2 - Endgame

Thalassicus said:

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Here's the midpoint of my game:



Policy path: Liberty tree → Commerce tree
Tech path: Masonry → Sailing → Calendar → Optics
Wonders: Great Lighthouse (free citystate ally) → Pyramids (free settler) → Colossus (+12/turn)

Click to expand...

My game has pretty much gone the exact same, same tech path, same wonders, even same cities.





Alex declared war on Harun and Suleiman early and managed to capture and keep a city from each and made peace. Later he turn his attention to me with only a scout, and a couple of spearmen. I asked Harun and Suleiman to declare war which they did after 10 turns which distraced the main force of his army away from me and they both captured the cities they lost earlier plus a couple extra. I went a bit mad expanding on the nearby island after this whilst managing to build a lot of the wonders and got denounced by Arabia & Ottomans whilst friendly for expanding too quickly and they both declared on me but neither has bothered to make any effort in attacking, the war's been going on a while. Just waiting for Artillery so some can capture cities safely. Still planning on settling next to Mt Fuji and Krakatoa.

The score leader in the game is huge, 80 million population and around 30000 .

Click Here to begin Game 1 of the VEM GotM. As fair respect for your fellow competitors, do not read Spoilers before starting the game. This thread is to discuss the endgame after the Astronomy tech. (Visit Spoiler Thread #1 for early game pre-Astronomy discussions.)

What are your thoughts on strategies you pursued, how gameplay evolved, and so on?

When you complete the game, please post your score, victory type (if you won), and attach a savegame of the moment just after the game ends. High scores for each victory type will be announced on the website, civmodding.wordpress.com.

I had trouble in this game from early on, when Alexander attacked me, and I lost a city. I spread out to the northeast islands. When I got Minutemen, I finally drove against Alexander, made peace, then was attacked by Arabia (5 techs ahead at that time) and was driven back. I held on, recovered, and used massed destroyers to capture 3 coastal cities directly south of Venice. In exchange for peace, he offered me his entire treasury, 107,000 gold!!, which I used to build out all of my cities, and ally with most of the City States.
I then attacked Suleiman, who was closing on a science victory (3 boosters). Instead, I should have attacked Siam first, which only had 3 cities.
I was behind on tech the entire game, until close to the end. I somehow managed to build the Pentagon, and captured Brandenburg Gate (from Arabia).
At the end I was catching up in tech, ahead on points , crushing Suleiman, but Siam completed the Utopia project. I should have attacked Siam first, or perhaps both simultaneously. I actually spent all of the gold, but was rapidly earning more.
The battles toward the end were bloody, with both sides losing several units per turn. Very interesting game, and for me very challenging.
I had several failed wonders, notably the Oracle by a couple of turns, and Sydney Opera House, by 1/2 turn!

Edit - My score - in defeat - was 3552

This game highlights some features I'd like to have in VEM, but are difficult or impossible to code for random maps, yet easy for GotVEM maps tweaked in the scenario editor. GotVEM maps will often include features rarely seen in purely random maps.

• Terrain chokepoints with strategic value like the land bridge to the south, near Arabia's desert. Chokepoints are basically impossible to ensure for randomized maps. I just kept generating maps until I found one with an interesting layout.
• Islands with luxury resources. VEM adds coal and stone to islands, which make islands amazing, but with less variety than "normal" luxuries. I plan on eventually adding a 3rd water luxury resource to the game to increase variety of coastlines and citystates.
• An interesting mix of citystate types at near and far distances. This is difficult but not impossible for random maps. I don't think I'll add it to the VEM map generator because highly random citystate results can be fun.
• Reasonably successful early game AI city expansion. Their expansion algorithm sometimes gets "stuck" with certain arrangements of coastlines. It's in the game core so I can't really fix this with our current modding tools for purely random maps, but tweaked the terrain so it works for all AIs on the GotVEM map.

We have achieved Victory! Space Race win 1800 AD.

I have a lot to say about this game, so prepare yourselves

First of all, I LOVED this map. Thal, you did such a great job providing us with a really interesting map with a really great amount of tension in resource placement. I can absolutely guarentee you put that coal to the SE of the capital in that spot just to screw with us "settle on a hill" suckers No but that was a really interesting feature, as people who settled in place had a very high production cap, while those who moved to the hill were benefited with very nice food. Also, I don't remember seeing anything about a raging barbs setting but man I encountered a TON of barb camps, luckily they didn't spew units at me otherwise I would have been in some serious trouble.

About the game in general, King really is a cakewalk. I don't mean to berate King players as I really see the appeal in playing a more relaxing game of civ rather than agonizing over every bit of city micro and strategic decision making. That being said, if you are a player like me who enjoys doing this, King is really really really easy. My closest competitor was Ghandi, who hilariously went for the Manhatten project as his win condition. WTF, I thought he was Ghandi? So my only competition in this game (Ghandi led me in score and tech for most of the game, with every other civ at about half our score value) finished the Apollo Project 1 turn before I finished the space race altogether.. I would have finished it even sooner in fact but I had a defensive pact with a civ in a game where literally the ONLY person who declared war all game was Alex and lo and behold Arabia declares war on my defensive pact partner and I wound up losing all of my DoFs and OBs with every civ in the game. Slowed me down some but meh I was already on the final 2 techs of the space race when it happened.

Hmm about city placement, I'd like to show you what I did as it is a bit different from the screens I've seen so far.








As you can see my first city was a very far New York, but wow what a city. Gems, Ivory, and a dyes, was never going to be a production powerhouse but it sure did produce a TON of gold and science.

The other noticeable difference I see is my 3rd city Boston. For those of us who moved to the hill with the cap, I HIGHLY recommend settling this spot. Normally it would be somewhat slow growing and maybe have a hard time working all the nice production tiles (end up with 3 stable resources + iron, coal, and aluminum), but with tradition and pioneers this city had no trouble growing, a VERY nice spot for a foundry.

I also chose not to settle the dyes to the north, I probably would have had I had extra happiness but I still managed to pick them up with my rapidly expanding borders of Philadelphia, which I chose to put on the northernmost hill, again a factor of where my capital was located.


So as you can see I did the Stonehenge in the cap start discussed in the pre-game thread. Scout->Worker->Stonehenge purchasing a granary with my first 350 gold. Hilariously enough, that was the only worker I hard built all game, I think I purchased about 7-8 more as needed. After getting the Stonehenge, I built a quick archer to support my foward settlement of New York, then I went back to wonder whoring. (Wow, wonders are fun, who knew ) I managed to grab a really late (not sure by King standards) Great Library, Followed up by the Hanging Gardens and then an Oracle snipe. Unfortunately I missed Notre Dame completely as I went looking for coal and a production boost in my cities instead, but I still managed to hard build the Porcelein Tower (didn't get the HS either). I then beelined to grab Taj Mahal and Big Ben, which was the last wonder built in the cap as its production started falling off compared to Boston.

While all this was going on, I was fighting a war to the south against Greece, basically with military CS ally units and maybe 3-4 hard built units to round out the unit mix. Again, King difficulty = dead AI cities with a barebones military, feels good to stomp them for a change




As you can see I sold Damascus in order to build Seattle, wow, what a city!! The damn thing grew from 2 pop to 16 pop in about 35 turns, and this is actually while I dipped into unhappy briefly taking out Alex. 4 Atolls, 3 fish, an oil, coal, and aluminum. If I had actually needed to build units this would have been a nice spot for it, oh well ^^







This is actually the first VEM game I have ever gone full Tradition, wow have I been missing out! At first glance it seems kind of meh, but then you actually watch its food bonuses in action and it is astounding, I may never select Liberty again! (j/k, but I think anyone who touches Liberty this game is making a mistake, you don't need free workers as you are rolling in gold from early lux sales, and no matter where you settle your cap settler production is quite fast)

So after completing Tradition, I made my way down the left side of the Patronage tree. I had made a nice amount of CS allies through killing barb camps (again, raging barbs anyone?) so the boost to my happiness and science was quite nice. I then used my Oracle policy to open Commerce, the extra income was sweet, and I wanted to leave my mid game options open to the possibility of a gold based economy and/or picking up a free great merchant if needed.

Following that I opened Rationalism (this policy never ceases to amaze me, the finisher is meh, but it has a little something for everyone it seems) and if memory serves I then opened Freedom for the production boost and again to leave my options open if it looked like I would be going specialist based as all indications pointed to this with my high food/growth.

Unfortunately I missed Statue of Liberty by 1 turn due to a micro blunder, I had wanted to switch production of the Oxford University when I had only 1 turn left but I missed it and had to grab Steam Power instead of Replaceable parts as I had intended to do. S.O.B !!!><><

I started to think now that a heavy specialist focus was probably not where I wanted to go, so I proceeded down Rationalism, filling the tree except for the 2 free tech policy, which I was saving for very late game.




My tech after Replaceable parts was to get the Eiffel Tower, I really needed this wonder if I wanted to finalize my conquer of Greece and continue growing my cities. I got the wonder easily, but because of this tech path I then missed Christo Redentor, again by 1 turn ><. (Although if I had microed my cities science output from the beginning of the tech I could have shaved a turn off as I remember I had 1 turn left on the tech but only about 200 science actually left to research) so who knows if I or Ghandi would have gotten it. Fortunately I did hit the Sydney Opera House (built in Phillie as my caps production capacity had diminished in comparison by this point). A very nice wonder, allowing me to head down into Order, getting even more happiness for an amazing golden age.





As far as great people are concerned, thanks to the Great Library/PT I was producing GSs in my cap faster than I could use them. My first great person was an Engineer thanks to Stonehenge and a pioneer fort which I used to make a great tile in the cap. This really helped my mid game production a ton, and was more than worth the time spent hard producing the wonders I could have burned him on. After this was all scientists, by the end of the game I had produced 8, with an additional 2 from the rationalism opener and completing the PT.


Just a general comment, I would have liked to have had a city on the lake to the south, I see a lot of people using this location as a strategic city to ward off Arabia so thats good. For whatever reason I just never managed to get a city there, but I also never really needed it. I was rolling in gold so I didnt need the extra lux sale, and I think all of the sites I settled were better than anything I could have put down there. Had this been a higher difficulty I might have considered it to block Arabia but the AI is so bad and really doesn't know how to put pressure on the human player at lower difficulties so it didn't matter.

So, if you actually read this whole post, thank you so much!! This was a really fun game of civ, and I'm glad to share my experience with you all. Thanks again to Thal for a great map and for giving us this great mod.

I hope to read more about your experiences with our first VEM GoTM, cheers!

I managed to achieve cultural victory in turn 232.

Early strategy: I first went for masonry (marble) and build the pyramids, while getting a free worker and settler from the liberty tree. The settler found New York to the north.
After that I researched sailing (pearls) and tried to build the Great Lighthouse, but Elisabeth was faster. The same happended to the Colossus. Two really ugly setbacks!
Then two settlers to found the cities in the east before Suleiman (who was settling like hell) could take the spots. Because no one bothered to built the Great library I could built it around turn 100 (very ununsual).
In the middle Ages I settled the two island cities. (Should have done this earlier but had not imagined how sweet islands are on this map).

On research: My maingoal was to get early to opera houses, next to museums and finally to broadcast towers and sydney opera. And I did some backfilling of course. I neglected the military part and had only longswords and minuteman for most time of the game.

On social policies: 3 liberty, all tradition, finishing liberty, freedom and piety mixed, order, commerce.

General strategy: Getting the cultural buildings and wonders early,
using all artist slots,
super science capital with settled great scientists,
super culture in New York with settled artists,
specialist strategy in the end using all specialist slots in all cities.
Ally of vienna, cape town and edinburgh (had most of my units from them), later all cultural CS

Diplomacy: Here I was really happy. I had a totally peacefull game. Alex early attacked Suleiman and Harun. The war lasted the whole game (with breaks), but no one could conquer a city. (Near the end Sulei captured Alex capital.) I stayed away from the war and was friend to Sulei and Harun for most of the game.
On the other continet Elisabeth had totally wiped out Gandhi in early renaissance, but stayed peacefull after that. France and Siam stayed peacefull, too.

Hello,

I won the game by a culural victory in Turn 227. I made some little mistakes in the game, so this result is not perfect (with this strategy). Turn 220 or earlier is doable easily.

I tried a little bit different (but maybe boring) strategy which works fine on king difficulty: Build only one city. The main reason is that all boni you get by the CS are added to your capital city, because of that you can get a very high population.

Best regards

Things have gotten a bit complicated, India had one city with 4 policy tress completed, the AI took care of it, no longer with us...

But now Suleiman has the Apollo project in 1600 !!! (maybe this needs balancing). Not sure how long before he wins by science, Elizabeth is on a conquering spree, but I doubt he has enough forces to break us all. I am like 10 techs to Globalization, but I generate GS pretty fast. At this point is all money and science for me, I am nearly sure I can get enough CS by my side when the time comes.

I have to say DragonGreen, going for a one city challenge is certainly creative! I don't think I've ever seen a city that big.

Thalassicus said:

I have to say DragonGreen, going for a one city challenge is certainly creative! I don't think I've ever seen a city that big.

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yes very cool! would u mind sharing a bt more? what wonders/policies did u get? what civ gave u the greatest challenge?

Holy Damn. 5 Academies, 4 Manufacturies, 6 Landmarks, and 2 Merchant buildings, and a boatload of wonders (I can see Cristo, CI, Taj, HS)

Nice use of OB to finish CS road quests.

EsoEs said:

yes very cool! would u mind sharing a bt more? what wonders/policies did u get? what civ gave u the greatest challenge?

Click to expand...

Yes, I will give a successive detailed report when I have more time, I guess next week But now I would like to begin...

There are better Leader (traits) which are more suitable for this strategy, but this isn't the point. Some comments later on that.

There are some key points for this strategy, but the first and most important one is the distribution of the boni you get by the CS, more precisely from the maritime and cultural CS. So if you only have one city, you get all boni from all CS to your own city.

Regarding the food distribution, you can get very high population in your capital.

So let's get back to 1880BC, Turn53. This is one of the two between-savegame I have only But that doesn't matter

First the country and the city:





So what I did between turn 0 and 53?:

• Don't build any city! (neither conquer one later in the game) This saves hammers, workers and some policies you don't need (liberty and later the order tree).
• Search order: Pottery -> Writing -- Great Library
• Mining -> Masonry -- Mining: production, Masonry: Marble, later Pioneer Fort (food)
• Philosophy -- National College
• Build order: Scout -> Scout -> Worker -> Monument -> Granary -> Great Library
• Purchase: when affordable the second worker
• Policies: Tradition -> Legalism c5gold: boost) -> Monarchy c5production: wonder boost, and for wonders)

In turn 54, the output jumps from 8 to 16,5.

Until here you'll notice that this is a "classic" GL strategy, but without spreading new cities. You can see that the bootstrap for such a powerful capital (just take a look at turn 99) isn't is a little bit tricky due to sparsely food surplus and production at the same time. But this can be solved...

The rest of the screens from turn 53 (for completeness):





The next post will be from turn 99

Please upload screenshots to http://imageshack.us, and use imageshack's service to resize them to 800 pixels wide or less. It makes the thread more readable.

(Resizing in photoshop or another image editing program also works.)

Thalassicus said:

Please upload screenshots to http://imageshack.us, and use imageshack's service to resize them to 800 pixels wide or less. It makes the thread more readable.

(Resizing in photoshop or another image editing program also works.)

Click to expand...

When I made my post I originally tried to make the photos this size, but it makes it very difficult to see the details of a zoomed out empire or of the city view screen., although a smaller size should be fine for policies/techs/ etc.

In that situation, use Imageshack's option to link small thumbnails to full-size versions of the images. When the upload completes there's a number of links to choose from, one of which is the thumbnail variety.

Thalassicus said:

Please upload screenshots to http://imageshack.us, and use imageshack's service to resize them to 800 pixels wide or less. It makes the thread more readable.

(Resizing in photoshop or another image editing program also works.)

Click to expand...

Done!

Score: 1293 ingame, 2586 in the Hall of Fame. (Not sure which is being counted.)

I beat my last science win (with Korea!) by one turn, though in retrospect I think I would have gotten a faster win with Diplo. I also suspect I could've gotten a faster win if I had ICSed once I reached the "happiness is irrelevant" stage (when happiness just doesn't seem to go down no matter how fast you grow) - but in both cases, not by much. I know I would have gotten a faster culture win if I hadn't expanded in the early Renaissance. Guess it'll be culture every GotVEM from now on until policy costs are adjusted if I want to be competitive.

I apologize if that sounds a little snarky, but the recent change to tech cost and the finish dates of the culture victories above make it clear to me that either culture is too plentiful or SPs too cheap at this point in VEM. Without really focusing on culture, I was four SPs away from being able to start the Utopia Project (which seems a little crazy to me) and gaining policies quite quickly - less than ten turns between each. Similar to the recent change to border expansion cost, culture availability has increased without a correlating increase in costs and should be reexamined. Obviously, since policies buff every other aspect of the game, it makes the game very easy after a certain point and I think that's why we're seeing such early win dates. There's also the fact that the Utopia Project doesn't have any tech/era prerequisites that make that VC imbalanced.

TL;DR - I think the complexity and difficulty are very front-loaded in the game at this point primarily because of the fast and easy SPs, and making policy costs a good bit higher at around the 10th to 15th policy would go a long way toward amending this issue.

Anyway, back to the game...

I had DoFs with most everyone for much of the game, notable exceptions being England (the most-hated on the other continent) and Greece. I had accepted two early DoFs with Greece (couldn't resist that juicy science) and was thinking "I sure hope this DoF is almost over; I probably shouldn't have taken the second one" because I smelled a rat, when sure enough, Alex demanded I denounce Arabia and knowing that Arabia would be much more loyal friends than Greece ever will be, I refused. Greece immediately denounced me, giving me a major diplo penalty with everyone else in the world (including Greece, they hated that "a friend found reason to denounce me" just as much as anyone, even though they were the "friend" in question!) and eventually DoWed me. I drove them back and took two cities between me and the Ottomans which I sold to the Ottomans, and took peace as soon as Alex was willing to give me a decent deal. By this point, Arabia and the Ottomans had declared on him, and every other Civ hated Greece as much as I - so in the end it was a diplo positive. The relations hit was thankfully not nearly so bad as it could have been - the worst part was that it took a while to get Siam to warm up to me and get a DoF in place. Apart from this, in terms of diplomacy it was a very quiet game.

Some highlights:

• I was allied with *all 16* City-States for close to 50 turns before victory, and once again the AIs with huge bank accounts refused to put up much of a fight for influence with them.
• Science: Ended being tech leader by a large margin with about 2250 BPT.
• Policies: Full Tradition, Liberty, Rationalism and Freedom; Patronage to Scholasticism, and all of Order minus Nationalism. [Tangent: TBH, I think the "specialist economy" is too powerful at this point; I really can't imagine not taking Freedom in any situation. With it and one of the specialist wonders Production, Growth, Gold and Culture are simply through the roof. From a pure gameplay perspective, Freedom and Order should be switched in terms of era unlocks; the power of Freedom would be mitigated and Order might see some more use.]
• Population: Was gaining pop in each of my cities every 2-3 turns from at least t200 if not before. My capital ended with 41pop; each of my other four cities were ~30. I'm happy to see that Hospitals and the Tradition food policies were nerfed. (Slightly off topic, but I also worry that completely removing the AI's food bonuses on higher difficulties will be a large nerf to their effectiveness. I haven't tested a beta with that change in effect, so I can't say definitively, but watching EsoEs' LP certainly seems to confirm this.)
• Happiness: Seemed to have at least 30 no matter what from ~t150 on.
• Wonders: Got all the late Wonders except Brandenburg Gate; I think Machu Picchu was the last one I was worried about losing.
• I ran out of buildings to build (except military training/production).

One more little thing that's been niggling me since release: why is the Research Lab not on the spaceship path? I was sorely tempted to use the free techs to snatch up Plastics but there's no way that that wouldn't have been a waste and I'm sure it would have slowed my win down. Can we have Plastics be a prereq for Computers? On a similar note, the spaceship factory is really useless, especially where it is in the tech tree - if it were available at Rocketry it may make it more useful.

lindanealmck said:

In exchange for peace, he offered me his entire treasury, 107,000 gold!!, which I used to build out all of my cities, and ally with most of the City States.
I then attacked Suleiman, who was closing on a science victory (3 boosters). Instead, I should have attacked Siam first, which only had 3 cities.
I was behind on tech the entire game, until close to the end. I somehow managed to build the Pentagon, and captured Brandenburg Gate (from Arabia).
At the end I was catching up in tech, ahead on points , crushing Suleiman, but Siam completed the Utopia project. I should have attacked Siam first, or perhaps both simultaneously.

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Is 107,000g a record pace deal? I haven't seen that much gold very often, period, let alone as a payoff!

I've had a "losing" civ sneak off with a cultural win against me twice. Now I make it a point to check the Victory Progress screen every once in a while from the midpoint on.

Did you consider going for a Diplo Victory?

Seek said:

Score: 1293 ingame, 2586 in the Hall of Fame. (Not sure which is being counted.)

I beat my last science win (with Korea!) by one turn, though in retrospect I think I would have gotten a faster win with Diplo. I also suspect I could've gotten a faster win if I had ICSed once I reached the "happiness is irrelevant" stage (when happiness just doesn't seem to go down no matter how fast you grow) - but in both cases, not by much. I know I would have gotten a faster culture win if I hadn't expanded in the early Renaissance. Guess it'll be culture every GotVEM from now on until policy costs are adjusted if I want to be competitive.

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No need to default to Culture in order to establish supreme supremacy, Seek - there is no "grand prize," as there's no way to balance for difficulty at this juncture. And as of now you take the gold in Science!

• I had DoFs with most everyone for much of the game, notable exceptions being England (the most-hated on the other continent) and Greece.
• I was allied with *all 16* City-States for close to 50 turns before victory, and once again the AIs with huge bank accounts refused to put up much of a fight for influence with them.
• Science: Ended being tech leader by a large margin with about 2250 BPT.
• Policies: Full Tradition, Liberty, Rationalism and Freedom; Patronage to Scholasticism, and all of Order minus Nationalism.
• Population: Was gaining pop in each of my cities every 2-3 turns from at least t200 if not before. My capital ended with 41pop; each of my other four cities were ~30. I'm happy to see that Hospitals and the Tradition food policies were nerfed.
• Happiness: Seemed to have at least 30 no matter what from ~t150 on.
• Wonders: Got all the late Wonders except Brandenburg Gate; I think Machu Picchu was the last one I was worried about losing.
• I ran out of buildings to build (except military training/production).

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So you played a tall Science game? I haven't done this in a long time, and while my record is 243 or 244, I did it before some major changes a while back that I think made the game harder. Do you know what I'm talking about, or have you finished in the 250+ range since the spring or so?

[Tangent: TBH, I think the "specialist economy" is too powerful at this point; I really can't imagine not taking Freedom in any situation. With it and one of the specialist wonders Production, Growth, Gold and Culture are simply through the roof. From a pure gameplay perspective, Freedom and Order should be switched in terms of era unlocks; the power of Freedom would be mitigated and Order might see some more use.]

(Slightly off topic, but I also worry that completely removing the AI's food bonuses on higher difficulties will be a large nerf to their effectiveness. I haven't tested a beta with that change in effect, so I can't say definitively, but watching EsoEs' LP certainly seems to confirm this.)

One more little thing that's been niggling me since release: why is the Research Lab not on the spaceship path? I was sorely tempted to use the free techs to snatch up Plastics but there's no way that that wouldn't have been a waste and I'm sure it would have slowed my win down. Can we have Plastics be a prereq for Computers? On a similar note, the spaceship factory is really useless, especially where it is in the tech tree - if it were available at Rocketry it may make it more useful.

Click to expand...

I agree that culture wins seem to come too quickly, that the Research Lab is a near-total waste where it's now located, and think switching Freedom with Order is definitely worth trying... or else nerfing Freedom, rather than worrying about whether the specialist economy is OP. But I don't follow you on the SS Factory. Don't you always have it when you start building parts (or, if broke, soon after)?

I won a Science Victory in 303 turns in a game that felt secure throughout, and entertained me with the required extensive exploration as well as semi-regular warfare. The map was a pleasure. I just downloaded the Explorers DLC!

Shortly after Astronomy I razed a city and rebuilt there, and then settled three cities in the NE islands. That gave me 8, and I settled in with them.

The main reason I didn’t finish sooner was that my population was pathetically low for a long time. By the end of the game I had three cities over 20 and 5 over 13, but it took me too long to get there. Part of the reason was that my second and third cities were hammer-rich, and that I overly focused the capital on production for Wonders early on. Lack of pop kept my science down and my gold enough to give me 4-5 allies, but no more.

I also used Liberty with the intent of going wide – 8 being wide for me – but waited too long to grow beyond a traditional tall start. I would have been better off using Tradition like I always do, since I basically played my usual game.

The game itself was always in control. I was the tech leader by the midpoint, and had a significant edge throughout, which allowed me to dominate militarily. As a result I played puppetmaster on my continent, taking and selling cities, keeping Greece and the Ottomans balanced, and befriending Arabia until they soured after I became the score leader.

Becoming the score leader after building my eighth city kept me from ever having more than three DoF’s at once at any point. (I finished with one: oddly, my longtime friend and co-leader, England.) This also kept me from racking up science. By the end of the game I had been at war with everyone except India (hostile until conquered) and England.

In terms of game play, I’ve already commented regarding some aspects in my previous post. In addition:

• the barbarians were too passive
• I was unable to negotiate peace with an AI vs CS
• Greece benefited from the Great Wall effect well after I had dynamite
• it seemed as if there were too many whale luxuries for the CS, due to the preponderance of island CS on the map
• going for Great Merchants early on in the SP trees seems like a no-brainer, making me wonder if they are OP
• the AI is a little better launching amphibious invasions, thanks to the embarkation defense change