Yep, you guys got it. Try to get a "starving Great Artist" to culture bomb was the biggest single thing to speed win time - picked Nidaros as prime target as it was fairly close to frontline. And plenty of cats + too slow to reach front. Before revolt I whipped any cats/phants with progress already and swapped other cities to HA's (speed over power). Right call on the cats, we clearly didn't need more, this is the deployment as Churchill died:
Looking at tech screen when starting, saw Churchill had Engineering, grr:
York was the biggest bloodbath - Churchill kept scratch whipping units instead of finishing that Castle, though since the city already had 60% defence that may well have been the right move. Lost about 13 units to kill 7.
Thanks for the leading Spy - made to London just in time and helped - London had 2 longbows, a Castle, and some mounted units; the first turn I could attack I had the Spy, about 8 vultures/phants/HA's but no cats. That worked out perfectly, Spy hit on the revolt, sacrifice one unit per longbow and romp over the mounted with WE's. (Aside on the AI - I wish it didn't build so many mounted units. They are perenially nerfed in the AI hands, it always mixes them with 1 movers so they lose the speed advantage. And any AI should be able to correctly choose between longbows, swords, and HA's when it is getting invaded...doubly so for a Protective one)
And in other good news, this city luckily had no longbows (on a hill too - for shame AI, for shame...):
Also assigned scientists and switched research to Drama in 4 turns - although Caste lowers the value of Theatres by allowing new cities to assign artists anyways, still the most useful tech that could actually be reached in time to do anything. Pacifism cost ~50 GPT (the "No Upkeep" does take a lot off the unit cost sting, even for Zergspammers like us
but that's fine, had plenty of cushion.
I didn't plan the Great Artist too well - since Nidaros had FP and Artemis, even with all the artists the GA chance was probably only about 50%, and didn't hit jackpot there. Uruk was also in starving artist mode but we won anyways before it even popped, let alone had time to get to the front. And I could have done more with training more settlers to plop down filler cities as a backup.
But if I had, we probably would win before this on the last full turn:
Hmm, perhaps could have won one turn earlier by capping him with just Nottingham left - we were literally 2-3 tiles short at the time of this picture. But seemed more satsifying to cleanse. (Also our taxmen were happier burning some more 3GPT units in the last battle
) If we lose to team A by one turn I'll apologize then.
York and Hastings came out of resistance together on 1300AD, so assign artists for one turn pop and:
For those curious, I went into WB post win. Other continent was Hatty + Charly, kind of cramped. Unfortunately extra constrainted by AI weakness:
Humans would be smart enough to settle a city at the X and pop borders to reach that sizable island by galley (provided one of them is sharp like lymond to see it in the first place.)
Also WB'd in a Caravel, here's where they were on the tech tree:
@LK - yeah another go around with these rules, won without the zerg spam would be interesting. But looking at this tech screen I'm sort of glad we didn't have to take the fight to Hatty - even if she is not a big unit builder, seems like she might well have Destroyers before we got to Galleons under these rules and that would make intercontinental warfare a nightmare...on the other hand, we actually weren't that far from Astro. Could bulb MC with the Merchant I got, creep-research literature for NE followed by compass/optics/machinery, setup a double scientist bulb of Astro by avoiding CS and Theology.
Nice work all. Sorry I wasn't in peak form during the game as a whole. Now, time to go taunt the other team