Contender, barbarian conquest challenge, conquest victory 2030 AD
Base score: 928
Final score: 883 (I might qualify for a shield with this score...)
Cities captured or razed: 0 (well ok, one city that the barbs captured from me flipped back, so I razed it)
Cities settled: 19 - of which the barbs captured 9 and razed the rest
Units built: 66 scouts, 51 workers, 28 keshiks, 13 knights, 12 cannons, 12 catapults, some grens, maces and other stuff
Units lost: 38 - not counting the non-combat units
Units killed: almost 700, of which 317 were catapults, 128 archers, and 76 horse archers. All of the horse archers were stray barbarians while most other units killed belonged to the AIs.
My self-imposed rules for this game were the following: no units of mine may ever attack any enemy city. Bombarding is ok, capture by culture is not. Goal: conquest using the barbarians for help.
This game played out in some different phases. First I settled on the hill and went looking for horses. Unfortunately I went the wrong direction so city#2 by the W horses wasn't founded until T42. Once I had the horses connected I went to war against all the AIs and spammed chariots and Keshiks to try to stop their expansion. I was a bit slow and allowed them to grab a couple of cities too many. When I finally had them all hiding in their cities and all improvements pillaged this was the city count:
Monty: 2 cities
HC: 2 cities
Cyrus: 2 cities
Alex: 1 city
Toku: 3 cities
Nappy: 3 cities
Next two barb cities spawned in the SW corner of the continent. I wanted them to connect the horses and ivory nearby so I settled a few cities there for them to take. Eventually this succeeded but that meant that the quota for barb units was filled so no more barbs spawned anywhere else. Aaaarrgghh, I had just painted my barbarian friends into a corner.
Not to worry, I said to myself, I shall just gift around construction to everyone so that the barbs eventually get it and can start building cats and war elephants. Said and done, and then I just had to wait the stipulated 30 turns before the barbs got the techs as well. Meanwhile, I shifted focus a bit to recover my economy which was almost at a standstill from the upkeep of all those Keshiks in foreign lands. As it turned out, one aspect of this plan worked excellently: namely that the AIs started producing cats instead of anything else. My little keshiks, with their +50% against cats, had a great time.
But the war elephants and the catapults never materialized. The barbs happily continued to build swords and axes. I tried again and again to bring these to Montys capital using worker and scout trails, but their production was too poor and the attacks too uncoordinated to succeed. Twice the last defender came down to 0.1 health, but then I had to start from the beginning again.
Time for plan B: gift out Civil Service and Machinery. This actually worked, and the barbs started to produce maces along with the horse archers that had by now become quite common. Monty's city#2, a hill city, fell sometime during this transition from swords to maces, and I managed to settle another two cities on the other side of Monty that the barbs took from me. But this put them at the magic number of 8 cities. Every city they captured after this was immediately razed. The only exceptions were holy cities and cities with a world wonder.
But the AIs, despite only working unimproved tiles, were starting to reach Feudalism. Time for plan C: gift around Guilds so that the barbs would be able to build Knights. Didn't work, they never built any of those either. And no musketmen with gunpowder.
I got bored and chopped down all the forests on the map. At least those that were inside enemy culture. And then, just as I was ready to give up completely, I manage to lure enough barb maces and horse archers to Tenochtitlan so that they can capture it.
1874 AD: Monty is dead!
153 turns to go. Can I actually pull this off after all? It is a long way to the other AIs, especially Nappy and Toku. Time for a new strategy: I am going to give up my core super-cities to the barbarians. These are my capital, the W horse city and a city N of the capital, and a city NW of Athens near the gold, copper and marble. I let the barbs have all of these and try to settle some new cities further away. But the loss of all cottages means that I have to disband almost all my units, including a fair number of heavily promoted cat-killer keshiks/knight. It becomes rather pointless to defend my new settlements against the barbs so I let them raze those too, only keeping a single city on the ice peninsula to the north. I station four reliable units on the only possible entrance which makes the barbs ignore me completely - this since they do not have a route to my city.
On 1945 AD, with 105 turns to go, my core cities belong to the barbarians. In total they now have 13 cities, all of which are well developed by now. The AIs still have the same number of cities as 2000 years earlier except for Monty, who is dead. And the barbs are still building Horse Archers and Macemen. Plenty of them. I have some spies, and it turns out that the barbs only build barracks, forge, and units in their cities. Nothing else. Those 13 cities are probably building 4-5 units per turn, and I guess these units have a check list looking something like this:
- Any cities that needs garrison - No
- Any improvements that can be pillaged - No
- Any cities that can be attacked - Yes, the AI cities.
The funny part is that all units are sent towards the same city, no matter where on the continent it is, and they continue to do so until that city is gone. Lucky that they reused my old roads and had Engineering, otherwise going back and forth between HC and Nappy would have taken even longer...
I get a bit worried near the end when I can't one of my few remaining cannons to Paris. The city has 60% culture and is defended by one Musketeer and two Longbows, all of them maxed out at CG3. I try but my cannons get killed on the way by the barbarians. But no need to worry, If five units isn't enough, the barbs send fifty.
Check the screenshot from earlier in the war against the French. There were even more units involved going for Paris, and they just kept coming, a long column of 4-5 fresh units per turn.
1970 AD: Alex is dead!
1974 AD: Cyrus is dead!
1980 AD: HC is dead!
2012 AD: Nappy is dead!
2030 AD: Toku is dead!
I must confess that the first 400 turns were among the most boring I have played.
But during the final 100 I just kept laughing at the barb masses pouring over the poor AIs. I haven't seen the like of it even in Immortal or Deity games. The numbers yes, but not the steady stream. But with all barb cities producing units with no economic consequences this is what will happen.
I admire your barbarian faith. 
. Eventually eliminated the Japanese followed by Monty, Huayna & finally Napolean.
) and then Diplomatic victories before 2050, when I added the Time victory notch to my belt.
Tried a practice game with the same settings and won a conquest victory in around 800AD for my highest score ever, so thought "this is easy, I'll give the real GOTM a go".
