I managed to stay friends with pretty much everybody but china. China denounced and was denounced by everybody, so I denounced her too. I was able to keep China from getting hostile even while denouncing her so I still got RAs until turn 250 or so. Ghandi started getting testy around that time and ceased being my friend. Towards the very end, everybody began to pick on and then DOW Askia. I joined in just to stay on everybody else's good side.
I think ultimately I stayed on everybody's good side because I stayed so small. I never settled a second city and just had my capital and five puppets. Moreover, Ghandi was on either side of my six city empire so he was the only AI with cities near me. This made me everybody's best friend except ultimately India. Even tho Ghandi became guarded I was still able to sign RAs with him, and I had enough resources to sell him on the cheap and try to keep him from doing something stupid. Also my military was among the best in the world thru most of the game. I took all the honor policies by game end b/c I just figured Ghandi and I were going to have it out at some point. Picking on China along with the rest of the world really helped forego this ultimately unprofitable eventuality, and following everybody picking on Askia helped too. The best part was everybody hated Persia as well, but I was able to stay friendly with them. No declarations of friendship, but no denunciations either. Persia was running away with the game, so it makes sense that they were willing to work with me as the one friendly power in the game. Also, we were on opposite sides of the world.
Persia was not quite a runaway, but clearly the dominant force in the early and mid game. They were dirty rotten filthy stinkin rich and bought up almost every CS. I had two nearby military CS from the very beginning of the game, which I held all game long. Darius had most of the other 14. Sometimes Greece or Khan or Harun would try to take one from Darius, but he was so rich he always got them back. At the very end, Wu was finally taking the lead, I think by managing to take some of Harun's cities with a military tech advantage.
At game end the leader (Wu) had 1500 points. I was in fourth with 1000 points or so. My science was pathetic at 269 beakers per turn on turn 305, but I only had one city and no observatory so... This is why RAs and great scientists meant so much to me. I had all the wonders buildings and policies to really crank out those scientists. I also had an engineer waiting to help build the UN, but it still took four more turns to build. I was a little surprised that my capital didn't grow more than it did (size 24). Probably b/c I only had two military CS allies all game.
The easiest part of this game was staying happy. I had only one city (my capital) and my five puppets provided a lot of lux resources. My military CS allies had good lux and ultimately strategic resources as well.
The hard parts of this game were (1) exploring the map, and (2) making money. I never built a scout and my capital was not on the coast. I ended up basically letting the AI find me. I explored maybe 3/4 of the globe with two extra workers that I sent swimming and exploring. I found Greece and Rome very late in the game.
With Japan spamming cities and acting like he always does I knew I had to strike while the iron was hot. I beelined to swords hooked up that iron and attacked. My military CS gave me some spears and pikes to help as well. I was so desperate to kill Japan before he got those dreaded samurai I ended up puppeting a five city empire that was about 20 spaces away. Getting roads out there was expensive and time consuming. Around turn 150 I was losing 30gpt and relied exclusively on resource sales to finance my empire. Around turn 200 I was breaking even finally, around turn 250 I had a couple thousand in the bank but I was very concerned about getting enough money for my endgame strategy.
By the endgame I was making about 100-150gpt depending on golden ages or not. I was very happy and had lots of long GAs thanks to some wonders and policies and cranking out great people. I got three great artists in one turn with the louvre and my city spitting one out
. I sold more resources than I probably every have, and signed more RAs than ever. I got the number of RAs exactly right and built Oxford one turn after the last RA gave me Computers (I mistimed by one turn
).
After the UN was built Harun Darius Wu and Ghandi all began wasting money trying to steal CS from each other. I had accumulated 14000 gold, which was a lot except Darius had 16000 gold and Harun had 7000 gold. However, they wasted some of that with the global war on Askia, wars with each other (Wu Harun and Darius all locked in a battle to the death), and stealing CS. Meanwhile, I was friends with both Harun and Darius so I was getting sweet rates on all sales. On the last turn before the vote I traded all my GPT and lux (200gpt maxed out) for about 4000 of Darius's gold. Sold everything I had to Harun as well. I then paid 1000 gold for every single CS on the map. I already had my two military CS, and 1000 gold worked for every single one of the other 14. I now had all 16 CS, and 5000 gold left in the bank. I declared war (completely and utterly back-stabbed) on Harun and Darius so that they could not buy back their CS. One turn wasn't long enough for them to kill any CS, so on the next turn I got a perfect 16 votes for my diplomatic victory.
I shudder to think of what the AI would have done to me in the next ten turns, probably every single AI would have attacked me and killed all my CS allies. Nevertheless, I won in good time. Fun game.
Alan.
