Non Competitive entry (playing with CQUI mod).
Science victory. Somewhere around T180 to T200 (sorry, i forgot to save and the autosave was overwritten but it's not a valid entry anyway)
- How many cities did you settle or capture?
9 for the largest part of the game (8-10 is the most i can be bothered to manage as long as there's no auto-renew for projects) thought i went to 10 and then more due to late game DoWs by stupid AIs.
- What did you prioritize for research and policies?
- Reasearch was the typical Mining-Animal Husbandry-Archery. Then Writing and Bronze Working then on to Apprenticeship (for improved mines) and Education. Then Machinery and Military Eng (to get Niter) then Industrialization (second mines boost) and then i lost track of how i navigated through industrial and later techs as i knew i needed most anyway. Chemistry was an early one of course.
- Civics is even more set into stone as the tree isn't as spread out and you usually don't need parts of it at all. Straight to Political Philosophy (prioritizing the branch i got inspiration for, in this case Foreign Trade-Early Empire) then on to Feudalism, then on to Exploration, on to Enlightenment, Suffrage and the rest doesn't really matter.
- Did you bother with Religion?
I didn't even use God King to get a pantheon. Tobacco would eventually give me one at some point.
- Did you bother with Culture?
Yes, i learned from the last Science GotM i played that focusing only on science means very late Suffrage and missing on cheaper GP purchases so this time i tried to keep a good culture flow. I used policies, Zigguraths and even built 2 theater squares with archeological museums (so i wouldn't have to bother getting artists). It turned out useless in the end because
AIs were so broke the entire game i couldn't make decent money to purchase GSs.
- How did you pump your Science?
Campuses everywhere with the buildings plus Zigguraths along rivers in several low production cities to the north was more than enough to get me far ahead of everyone and science definitely wasn't the limiting factor for that "late" victory.
- Did you instigate any major wars?
"Do it or don't, but there is no try". I instigated only 2 wars but they were quick, brutal and definitive.
First war was started on T1 and ended the same turn. You can probably guess who was the victim.
Second war started a few turns later, still in Ancient Era. Rome who i met a few turns before marched 4 warriors straight at my capital while both cities were producing slingers and i had 2 carts (my first builds) and the my warrior out exploring. As soon as the first slinger was out, i declared on him as my carts were coming back. I killed 2 warriors, the other 2 scattered in the hills. The (now 3) slingers quickly upgraded to archers and they along the 2 carts marched on Rome while 2 more carts were being produced in case the warriors came back. Augustus had the good idea to produce a settler and i could capture it with a cart just before i took Rome. War Carts are really strong.
I could and probably should have pushed on Sparta at that time but Gorgo was friendly, had only 1 city and there was plenty of room to expand. Later i met Peter but was already in build mode by the time it happened.
I've been the target of 2 DoWs later. First by Victoria and Gorgo who quickly blamed me for "yielding too easily" even thought she witnessed the conquest or Rome. I lost a pair of scouts exploring the second continent to Victoria, took Gorgo's second city (the one close to my border) and was busy reducing Sparta's countryside to smoking ruins as she wouldn't cede Knossoss when my friend Peter gang-banged on her and took Sparta, solving the issue (my Field Cannons bombarding Sparta probably helped his knights slightly). I decided to wait before ending the war with Victoria until i could escort Charles Darwin to the 4-tile NW in English land just in case she wouldn't sign an Open Border so i sent a pair of tanks to make a mess of her crossbows and protect the scientific expedition.
Later, it was Saladin (who hated me for being a Warmonger after capturing a single city from Gorgo who attacked me) and my old friend Peter! Needless to say i didn't really like this betrayal so i decided to teach him a lesson. The instructors were my modern armors and jet bombers. Game was already over at that point and all of this was actually a fun distraction so i decided to liberate Sparta to see what would happen as i was still at war with Gorgo when Sparta fell. Turned out the liberation offset the occupation penalty (Knossoss was still mine) and my war with Peter quickly turned her friendly. I could probably have ended the war with Peter but was having fun sending him back to the dark ages after taking St-Petersbourgh and was still at war when the game ended.
- Were City-States helpful?
What city states? Were there city states in this game?
Well, actually once i managed to actually contact some useful CS (not that useless cultural one next to Sparta) i had enough envoys to quikcly become suzerain of Geneva and more importantly Stockholm so i guess, yes they were.
- Did you spare Monty?
Heresy!
- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?
AIs were broke. I mean totally broke. Best deal i could get for my luxuries most of the game was like 50
+1gpt. No way to make decent money. And of course no way to trade GpT for immediate gold either. I dealt with it by
not building Big Ben, running Research project purely for the GS and launching much later than expected. In fact none of the modern/atomic era GS i used gave me any Eureka as i already had all the techs from their era when i recruited them, but i had to recruit them all since AIs were so far behind and didn't recruit any. I think i already had researched Future Tech a couple times when i got the first atomic era GS!
- Did you enjoy the game?
The early game was fun. The middle part also as i was building up my empire and laughing at Gorgos empty threats (come test your Hoplites against my knights and crossbows). The late game was way too long due to being forced to recruit (not even buy) every single GS. I might even have been faster using Rome to build the spaceport and hard building the projects but the last GotM science game i played, i spent a lot of time building 2 very strong production cities to finally find out you just need 2 scientists to finish the game in 4 turns. Unfortunately this game, getting to those scientists was a real pain. I might actually try again, not bother about GS and just hard build everything to compare.
Thanks a lot!
