Economic Victory, Down to the Wire

[CharlieM]

Playing as Saladin/Arabia on Emperor, I saw a path to an Economic Victory about half-way through the game.

It was one of those "just-enough-defense" games, where I did not attack others after about the halfway point of the game, but I took out Bismark early. This gave me two cities way up north, to go with two I had started in the south.

It was this geographical distance that ended up almost costing me the game. About 1500 AD, when I was not looking, darn Lincoln put a city right between my two population centers. US to the west, Egypt was to the south, Greece to the east. Basically one land mass.

At the end-game, I had World Bank in five turns in my big production city, but I was hurting badly for defense. An amazing Pikeman Army held off wave after wave of Egyptian Bombers or Fighters in my production city.

The end of the story ... I swear that my Gold dropped below 20,000, because Lincoln took one of my cities and took about 3,000 gold with it. But the message came up saying I had built the World Bank and won the game. Again, I think my Gold had just dropped below 20,000, but I got away with it.

I fell on the floor in shock. I thought I was going to get wiped out in my last city, unable to re-build the Gold to win.

 

[Raw Power]

Nice story.

However loosing gold after getting the 20k doesn't matter as once you have achieved the amount your "golden".

Actually you should have rush bought units, walls, barracks, etc the turn you got to 20k and was able to start building the world bank. That would probably have made your defense easier, heck you might even buy some tech from the AI unless you were at war with all of them, and it might just have been useful then to give them whatever they wanted for peace so you could catch up in tech or get them to leave you alone.

 

[CharlieM]

They were all at war with me, unconditionally.

And I was rushing everything I could get my hands on!