Domination victory on turn 172
I played a few long games of this scenario before I got lucky. Really lucky, it was a walk through, I think the civ gods took pity on me at last. I was over cautious, a better player could have won quicker.
Took Attila to one 1 city, which I had surrounded for xp when my scout saw Monte'e cities were all empty. I took a satellite city with one missile and one scout loss, captured with a scout. Same scout captured Monte's capital, with the aid of some elephants and 2 missiles. Monte was attacking the Danes, he just brought his army back for my bows to take out. He relocated his capital to Bogota and build the great wall there. I captured the city and decided not to keep the Great Wall in favour of the happiness and culture and ally. I made an effort to ally with Hong Kong and declared war on Greece soon after, Alex had most of the CS s allies, I had to protect my back.
Harald was losing the war with Monte and he only had a few troops. As I was sizing him up, Shaka's army arrived, I paid him to DOW Alex, and he went away. I was attacking Copenhagen when all Shaka's army arrived back, but they were heading for the Great Wall. I put a scout and an elephant outside Bogota and pledged to protect it. Alex then allied with Samarkand, and Shaka went to attack there instead. Finally, Alex attacked Shaka and took Nobamba and Shaka was responding.
While this was happening I took the Dane's capital and Aarhus for peace.
As Shaka was recalling his troops they were strung out and I attacked them. I defended and released Aarhus from Shaka for a few turns until I had destroyed all his troops. He have me his second city for peace, so I took it and went for Athens, it looked easy with nearly all my archers with range and logistics, and it was. I did use the last missile against Athens, just for a quick kill. I went back to finish Shaka about 12 turns later?
easy win. lucky. but I'll take it..
I learned a lot. Domination rush in Deity with a non warlike civ needs the NC opener for the late game support. On normal game speed anyway.
On bigger maps this than, or difficult maps, slogging an army across the board just isnt viable and this strategy wouldn't work. Elephants are fragile, just need a pocket full of mice, so crossbows in the front line is essential, especially for cities. I had a good mix of 4 elephants and 3 bows to start, largely forced on me by circumstance.
I wouldn't have beaten this game without the missiles.
Thanks for indulging me, I enjoyed the game but it took a lot of my time.. domination with the EUI is so much easier, for a quick glance at the promotions. That is definitely my last Gandhi game .. such a horrible colour.. and my last game of civ for a while....