Thrasybulos
Warlord
- Joined
- May 4, 2023
- Messages
- 246
Tournament 2
Eaupx has requested that Season 1 maps be given a pass until he's completed running AH for them: not a problem.
So for this one, I just added Season 2 maps to the remaining Seasons 5, 6, and 7 maps to draw from.
Here is what random.org picked:
Arena 1 : Season 6, Opening Round, Game 3
Arena 2 : Season 2, Playoffs, Game 1
Arena 3 : Season 5, Playoffs, Game 3
Arena 4 : Season 6, Opening Round, Game 1
Arena 5 : Season 2, Opening Round, Game 8
Arena 6 : Season 2, Opening Round, Game 2
Arena 7 : Season 6, Opening Round, Game 4
Arena 8 : Season 7, Opening Round, Game 4
Round 1
Funnily enough, random.org has assigned both Mao and Qin to this game, which is played on a Season 7 map which featured them both. Unfortunately for Qin, Mao gets the start which had allowed Qin to play a very strong game, while Qin himself is stuck with the start that Wang Kon had got in that game. That puts both Chinese as neighbours, and their lands should truly recreate the Empire of the Middle!
Each of the western leaders (Boudica, Lincoln, Hammurabi) founds his own religion. Which means that when Vicky founds the CoL religion, it becomes the Eastern faith (Victoria, Zara, Qin).
Mao is off to a bad start when barbs raze one of his cities. He launches an attack on Hammurabi, only to get assaulted from the other side by Zara. The pincer move proves fatal, and Mao is the first out of the game. Somehow Babylon has managed to get every single city, and thus gone from the weakest civ to the largest.
Boudica tries an ill-advised invasion of a much stronger America, and her cities start falling one by one to Lincoln's counter-attack. But Qin sees his moment and he ploughs into America from the other side. Lincoln, who had been the game leader until that point, collapses.
In the East, some low probability dice rolls trigger two declarations of war while at Pleased: Zara attacks Hammurabi, followed by Victoria backstabbing him. The English are by far the tech leaders at this point, and they're sporting rifles while the Ethiopians are at the bottom of the field and still medieval: it gets ugly fast.
With the conquest of America, China has become the largest and most powerful civilization... but England has a growing 13-tech lead and is in the process of absorbing Ethiopia.
Lincoln has barely fallen that Boudica makes another suicide attempt by attacking Hammurabi. No miracle this time, especially when Viccy joins up and decides to test her new toys on Celtic cities.
Qin has been catching up on Viccy, but she's nearing the end the tech tree and with her being at war (however one-sided) with all the late game tools at her disposal, her power rating has rocketed up.
Qin makes the correct move: he attacks Hammurabi. At least, that should secure his second-place finish.
Then a glimpse of hope: as she's become infamous for, Viccy pulls the Culture slider when she's almost done with the tech tree, and far, far removed from 3 legendary cities.
Qin is on Robotics, so he's almost bound to launch before then.
But he's also made an incorrect move: he's gone Free Religion, dropping his shared faith bonus with Viccy...
SB opens with a 13-turn Sailing, followed by Hunting -> Archery. Seems wise.
Asoka (Buddhism) and Ramesses (Judaism) get the first religions.
Shaka declares on Ramesses on turn 60 (the Egyptians do have metal)! He loses his stack, then a city to the Egyptian counter-attack, before signing peace.
SB founds a late Monotheism religion (Hinduism) and becomes an instant religious pariah as the whole world is already converted to a different faith (Asoka and Willem Buddhism, all the others Judaism). Then Willem discovers Theology, founds Christianity, and converts on the spot. So there's now a 4-civ Jewish block, and 3 heretics each following a different religion.
Willem is off once again to a bad tournament start he finds himself on the receiving end of a Jeweish dogpile (Ramesses, Shaka, Hannibal) and is the first to exit the game. while Alex attacks SB, gets interrupted by Asoka, fights him off, then resumes his attack on SB.
Ramesses emerges of that sequence as the strongest leader on the field, but with still a way to go.
Meanwhile, Alex attacks SB then signs peace when he gets interrupted by Asoka, fights him off and signs peace.
And that pattern would get repeated over and over again, with the odd Shaka attack on SB and Hannibal attack on SB intermingled.
With Ramesses the only leader not involved in warring and thus able to build up peacefully, Egypt's lead now reaches runaway status.
The Alex / SB / Asoka pattern is broken when Hannibal, the undisputable second strongest leader behind Ramesses, declares on Asoka and runs him over. But on the very turn he captures Asoka's last city, he drops into Free Religion, which causes Ramesses to drop to Cautious with him.
Egypt starts plotting right away.
Hannibal is Industrial, with tanks and infantries. Egypt has nukes and a fully Modern army...
Peter and Saladin get the early religons, Mansa gets the 3rd.
Speaking of Mansa, he encounters a weird barbarian problem:
He keeps advancing his settler to the forested tile, then I dunno, spots barbarians two tiles away (the city), so retreats to his territory. He then advances again, retreats again, etc.
As a result, he's still on 2 cities on turn 50, and Bismarck gets to settle the area.
Brennus opens hostilities by attacking Cathy. Then, unsurprisingly, Peter declares on Saladin.
Cyrus is the winner of the expansion phase, a position he reaffirmss by running over Bismarck (who shows how kind-hearted he is by using his few remaining production queues to build wonders for Cyrus to own).
Peter's war backfires as he gets conquered by Saladin, allowing the Arabs to catch up to their Persian Muslim allies.
Brennus, who's been warring on and off with Cathy and Mansa, faces his doom when Saladin's armies cross his borders. Or is it when Cyrus also crosses over?
Cathy thinks she sees an opportunity and strikes at Mansa... who has access to far more advanced units. She's soon retreating across her own territory.
Mansa has founded 5 religions: he pulls the slider. It becomes a race between Mansa's culture and Saladin's science: the Arab leader has indeed pulled way ahead of the rest of the field. But Mansa has done the common thing where he's researched every source of unhealthiness, skipped the Biology line, and pulled the slider on Plastics. As a result, his 3rd Legendary candidate has shrunk to a size seven sewer pit.
Saladin easily wins that race.
Both Sury and Monty declare early wars (T75), their targets being Darius and Ragnar.
Monty's war is a resounding success: he crushes Ragnar and looks like he's started a snowball.
Sury's... not so much. He loses a city to the Persians and takes advantage of the Incans joining the war to get out of it. HC looks like he's going to pull off an easy conquest: his initial attack nets him a city, and his power rating is much higher than Darius's and remains so. And yet, his offensive stalls out.
Then in the same turn, Louis and Sury pile on poor Darius, while Monty invades America.
Persia is swiftly wiped out.
Washington, who until that point had been in second place, resists better, but his cities are still dropping one by one.
Louis decides he doesn't like the looks of Sury and declares on him.
And then HC forgets to plug in his brain: he declares on Monty! The Aztecs are much bigger, much more powerful, and they have unlocked rifles while HC is doing the "William special"!
After Washington and HC are gone, Louis barely has the time to finish off Sury before the Aztec hordes pour into France.
Monty Unleashed.
Gilgamesh, with a Gold tile at his capital, delays Mining so much that he only connects it on turn 65! :weed:
Early war declaration by Genghis Khan (T66) vs Roosevelt, with New York captured right away. His attack then stalls out for some time, until JC joins him.
GK had the best early expansion, but he stopped after his attack, and De Gaulle ends up with the most settled cities (11), including one by the Gems next to Karakorum which GK didn't seem interested in.
After Roosevelt's demise, Elizabeth unsurprisingly finds herself on the receiving end of a major and fatal dogpile: the whole world declares on her!
After Lizzy's elimination, Gilgamesh, who had been boxed-in at the start, is the weakest of the remaining leaders. The others are fairly comparable, with De Gaulle slightly ahead. But France is Hindu in a Muslim world...
Gilgamesh seems to be following a backup plan: he's founded four religions and built Sistine, and is already on culture2.
JC declares on DG, but it goes horribly wrong as his power rating takes a precipitous plunge and he starts losing cities. Then GK declares on the French too, and that enables JC to make up some of his losses back before he signs peace. Inexplicably, GK soon signs peace too, when his armies were much larger and he had unlocked rifles ahead of everyone.
After a short period of peace, De Gaulle remembers the best defense is a good offense and he attacks JC. Once again, the Mongol warhorns sound... but this time the Khan opts to side with the French, against his religious ally!
Rome gets wiped out.
Gilgamesh beelines Mass Media and pulls the slider. Then he cancels it as he starts plotting. Then he cancels his plotting and after a short while, pulls the slider again.
De Gaulle cons him into signing a Defensive Pact... which gets triggered as Genghis inevitable declares on the French.
But although Gilgamesh pulls the slider off again, and De Gaulle weasels himself out of the conflict, it is too late to stop the Sumerian cities from getting Legendary.
As far as I can remember, first game with an all high peaceweight cast.
Gandhi-of-the-triple-gold-start beats Charlie to Meditation AND Polytheism. And he gets Monotheism on T26 for a sub-T30 triple Holy City! Joao later founds the CoL religion, but Gandhi also gets the Theology and Philosophy religions, the latter making Bombay a quadruple Holy City! Oh, and he would also found the Divine Right religion a bit later...
A few inconsequential early wars are declared (WK vs Hatty, Charlie vs Gandhi).
Of more consequence is the 1v2 Joao faces (Augustus + Charlie) since it leads to his elimination.
Charlie then goes back after Gandhi, triggering the slow conquest of his land by the Indians while their cities start radiating Culture (already at 20K+ on turn 220 without the slider).
Things get interesting when this creates so much border tension with Rome, by far the world's top military power, that Augustus declares on Gandhi. The latter immediately signs peace with Charlie to face that threat.
WK knows easy pickings when he see them: he invades the remnants Holy Rome right away and quickly conquers them.
Bombay falls, putting an end to Gandhi's Cultural dominance dreams. Then Dehli falls, heralding the end of the whole Indian civilization.
Gandhi is down to a single tundra village (soon to be conquered) when Wang Kon makes his move and declares on Augustus: the Romans are much larger but still fielding a Renaissance army while the Koreans are fully industrialized. And then Hatty backstabs WK (or rather, pays him back for his early game aggression?): she's weaker, but at tech parity although she lacks Oil.
After a few cities change hands, they all sign peace.
Augustus takes advantage of the lull to industrialize his armies, and he renews hostilities with the Koreans who stand no chance now.
Justinian and Pericles get the first religions. Suleiman gets boxed-in hard.
In addition to being the only high peaceweight leader in a low peaceweight game, Pericles utterly fails to spread his religion while Justinian does.
Napoleon starts the dogpile. Then Stalin joins in.
No, wait. Stalin declares on Kublai?!
That war goes nowhere and does nothing except prevent them both from joining the dogpile on Pericles.
Justinian and Suleiman do, though, lest Napoleon gets everything. But too little, too late: Napoleon does get everything, except for the last two cities (desert and tundra) which go to the Byzantines.
And now the world seems to be having a snowballing Napoleon problem...
Of which Suleiman seems unaware as he chooses that moment to drop out of the world's religion in favour of a self-founded faith.
The attack is surprisingly long in coming, and when it does, Napoleon even slows things down by agreeing to peace half-way through through his conquest before resuming hostilities a bit later and finishing off the job this time.
Meanwhile, Stalin has another go at the Mongols, which proves a fatal mistake.
Napoleon is much quicker in making his next move: he attacks Justinian.
But he's taken so long in attacking then conquering Suleiman that he's allowed Justinian to tech up to Assembly Line while he's oddly skipped Military Tradition. So while his troops outnumber the Byzantines 3 to 1, it's knights and rifles vs cavalries and infantries.
And yet, although the French suffer grievous losses, they rout the Byzantines whose last hope comes crashing when the Mongols join the attack against them.
Pacal and Isabella get the early religions. Isabella spreads hers to the western civs (Frederick, Mehmed), Pacal his to Churchill, while Toku picks up Pacal's minority religion.
Churchill is the first to start plotting (against Toku presumably), but he gets attacked by Mehmed before he can follow through. That attack is a failure as the Ottomans end up losing a city before they sign peace.
Frederick then Mehmed convert to Pacal's religion: Izzy joins Toku in the religious pariahs club.
Toku declares on Churchill: they're number one and number two in power. Border cities get traded back and forth.
Mehmed attacks Isabella.
Left alone, Pacal is already running away with the game, techwise: T144 Liberalism.
The anglo-japanese war ends with Toku the clear winner on the battlefield... yet agreeing to peace without any territorial gain.
Freddy, who ended up boxed-in, is losing more and more tiles to Pacal's culture and slipping into irrelevance.
Mehmed's war is still going but has stalled. Toku, who is now the undisputed power leader, backstabs him.
The Ottomans collapse.
Freddy, leading the runt civ of the game, and still medieval, declares on Pacal who has rifles and is researching Assembly Line... Needless to say, it doesn't go well. Churchill, a more respectable opponent, tries to help, though. But he gets immediately backstabbed by Toku, while Izzy joins Pacal in mopping up the few remaining German cities.
Freddy and Churchill exit the game.
Izzy, still on the warpath then turns round and attacks Toku: both have rifles, but Toku lacks cavalries. Japan is nevertheless much bigger and more powerful than Spain, so unless Pacal gets involved, that doesn't bode well for Izzy.
Speaking of Pacal... he's researching Robotics while Toku is on Military Science and Izzy on Railroad!
Isabella's bold gamble pays off as Pacal invades Japan: she gets to finish second, and, more importantly, she simply gets to live.
Eaupx has requested that Season 1 maps be given a pass until he's completed running AH for them: not a problem.
So for this one, I just added Season 2 maps to the remaining Seasons 5, 6, and 7 maps to draw from.
Here is what random.org picked:
Arena 1 : Season 6, Opening Round, Game 3
Arena 2 : Season 2, Playoffs, Game 1
Arena 3 : Season 5, Playoffs, Game 3
Arena 4 : Season 6, Opening Round, Game 1
Arena 5 : Season 2, Opening Round, Game 8
Arena 6 : Season 2, Opening Round, Game 2
Arena 7 : Season 6, Opening Round, Game 4
Arena 8 : Season 7, Opening Round, Game 4
Round 1
Spoiler Arena 8 :
Funnily enough, random.org has assigned both Mao and Qin to this game, which is played on a Season 7 map which featured them both. Unfortunately for Qin, Mao gets the start which had allowed Qin to play a very strong game, while Qin himself is stuck with the start that Wang Kon had got in that game. That puts both Chinese as neighbours, and their lands should truly recreate the Empire of the Middle!
Each of the western leaders (Boudica, Lincoln, Hammurabi) founds his own religion. Which means that when Vicky founds the CoL religion, it becomes the Eastern faith (Victoria, Zara, Qin).
Mao is off to a bad start when barbs raze one of his cities. He launches an attack on Hammurabi, only to get assaulted from the other side by Zara. The pincer move proves fatal, and Mao is the first out of the game. Somehow Babylon has managed to get every single city, and thus gone from the weakest civ to the largest.
Boudica tries an ill-advised invasion of a much stronger America, and her cities start falling one by one to Lincoln's counter-attack. But Qin sees his moment and he ploughs into America from the other side. Lincoln, who had been the game leader until that point, collapses.
In the East, some low probability dice rolls trigger two declarations of war while at Pleased: Zara attacks Hammurabi, followed by Victoria backstabbing him. The English are by far the tech leaders at this point, and they're sporting rifles while the Ethiopians are at the bottom of the field and still medieval: it gets ugly fast.
With the conquest of America, China has become the largest and most powerful civilization... but England has a growing 13-tech lead and is in the process of absorbing Ethiopia.
Lincoln has barely fallen that Boudica makes another suicide attempt by attacking Hammurabi. No miracle this time, especially when Viccy joins up and decides to test her new toys on Celtic cities.
Qin has been catching up on Viccy, but she's nearing the end the tech tree and with her being at war (however one-sided) with all the late game tools at her disposal, her power rating has rocketed up.
Qin makes the correct move: he attacks Hammurabi. At least, that should secure his second-place finish.
Then a glimpse of hope: as she's become infamous for, Viccy pulls the Culture slider when she's almost done with the tech tree, and far, far removed from 3 legendary cities.
Qin is on Robotics, so he's almost bound to launch before then.
But he's also made an incorrect move: he's gone Free Religion, dropping his shared faith bonus with Viccy...
Spoiler Arena 7 :
SB opens with a 13-turn Sailing, followed by Hunting -> Archery. Seems wise.
Asoka (Buddhism) and Ramesses (Judaism) get the first religions.
Shaka declares on Ramesses on turn 60 (the Egyptians do have metal)! He loses his stack, then a city to the Egyptian counter-attack, before signing peace.
SB founds a late Monotheism religion (Hinduism) and becomes an instant religious pariah as the whole world is already converted to a different faith (Asoka and Willem Buddhism, all the others Judaism). Then Willem discovers Theology, founds Christianity, and converts on the spot. So there's now a 4-civ Jewish block, and 3 heretics each following a different religion.
Willem is off once again to a bad tournament start he finds himself on the receiving end of a Jeweish dogpile (Ramesses, Shaka, Hannibal) and is the first to exit the game. while Alex attacks SB, gets interrupted by Asoka, fights him off, then resumes his attack on SB.
Ramesses emerges of that sequence as the strongest leader on the field, but with still a way to go.
Meanwhile, Alex attacks SB then signs peace when he gets interrupted by Asoka, fights him off and signs peace.
And that pattern would get repeated over and over again, with the odd Shaka attack on SB and Hannibal attack on SB intermingled.
With Ramesses the only leader not involved in warring and thus able to build up peacefully, Egypt's lead now reaches runaway status.
The Alex / SB / Asoka pattern is broken when Hannibal, the undisputable second strongest leader behind Ramesses, declares on Asoka and runs him over. But on the very turn he captures Asoka's last city, he drops into Free Religion, which causes Ramesses to drop to Cautious with him.
Egypt starts plotting right away.
Hannibal is Industrial, with tanks and infantries. Egypt has nukes and a fully Modern army...
Spoiler Arena 6 :
Peter and Saladin get the early religons, Mansa gets the 3rd.
Speaking of Mansa, he encounters a weird barbarian problem:
He keeps advancing his settler to the forested tile, then I dunno, spots barbarians two tiles away (the city), so retreats to his territory. He then advances again, retreats again, etc.
As a result, he's still on 2 cities on turn 50, and Bismarck gets to settle the area.
Brennus opens hostilities by attacking Cathy. Then, unsurprisingly, Peter declares on Saladin.
Cyrus is the winner of the expansion phase, a position he reaffirmss by running over Bismarck (who shows how kind-hearted he is by using his few remaining production queues to build wonders for Cyrus to own).
Peter's war backfires as he gets conquered by Saladin, allowing the Arabs to catch up to their Persian Muslim allies.
Brennus, who's been warring on and off with Cathy and Mansa, faces his doom when Saladin's armies cross his borders. Or is it when Cyrus also crosses over?
Cathy thinks she sees an opportunity and strikes at Mansa... who has access to far more advanced units. She's soon retreating across her own territory.
Mansa has founded 5 religions: he pulls the slider. It becomes a race between Mansa's culture and Saladin's science: the Arab leader has indeed pulled way ahead of the rest of the field. But Mansa has done the common thing where he's researched every source of unhealthiness, skipped the Biology line, and pulled the slider on Plastics. As a result, his 3rd Legendary candidate has shrunk to a size seven sewer pit.
Saladin easily wins that race.
Spoiler Arena 5 :
Both Sury and Monty declare early wars (T75), their targets being Darius and Ragnar.
Monty's war is a resounding success: he crushes Ragnar and looks like he's started a snowball.
Sury's... not so much. He loses a city to the Persians and takes advantage of the Incans joining the war to get out of it. HC looks like he's going to pull off an easy conquest: his initial attack nets him a city, and his power rating is much higher than Darius's and remains so. And yet, his offensive stalls out.
Then in the same turn, Louis and Sury pile on poor Darius, while Monty invades America.
Persia is swiftly wiped out.
Washington, who until that point had been in second place, resists better, but his cities are still dropping one by one.
Louis decides he doesn't like the looks of Sury and declares on him.
And then HC forgets to plug in his brain: he declares on Monty! The Aztecs are much bigger, much more powerful, and they have unlocked rifles while HC is doing the "William special"!
After Washington and HC are gone, Louis barely has the time to finish off Sury before the Aztec hordes pour into France.
Monty Unleashed.
Spoiler Arena 4 :
Gilgamesh, with a Gold tile at his capital, delays Mining so much that he only connects it on turn 65! :weed:
Early war declaration by Genghis Khan (T66) vs Roosevelt, with New York captured right away. His attack then stalls out for some time, until JC joins him.
GK had the best early expansion, but he stopped after his attack, and De Gaulle ends up with the most settled cities (11), including one by the Gems next to Karakorum which GK didn't seem interested in.
After Roosevelt's demise, Elizabeth unsurprisingly finds herself on the receiving end of a major and fatal dogpile: the whole world declares on her!
After Lizzy's elimination, Gilgamesh, who had been boxed-in at the start, is the weakest of the remaining leaders. The others are fairly comparable, with De Gaulle slightly ahead. But France is Hindu in a Muslim world...
Gilgamesh seems to be following a backup plan: he's founded four religions and built Sistine, and is already on culture2.
JC declares on DG, but it goes horribly wrong as his power rating takes a precipitous plunge and he starts losing cities. Then GK declares on the French too, and that enables JC to make up some of his losses back before he signs peace. Inexplicably, GK soon signs peace too, when his armies were much larger and he had unlocked rifles ahead of everyone.
After a short period of peace, De Gaulle remembers the best defense is a good offense and he attacks JC. Once again, the Mongol warhorns sound... but this time the Khan opts to side with the French, against his religious ally!
Rome gets wiped out.
Gilgamesh beelines Mass Media and pulls the slider. Then he cancels it as he starts plotting. Then he cancels his plotting and after a short while, pulls the slider again.
De Gaulle cons him into signing a Defensive Pact... which gets triggered as Genghis inevitable declares on the French.
But although Gilgamesh pulls the slider off again, and De Gaulle weasels himself out of the conflict, it is too late to stop the Sumerian cities from getting Legendary.
Spoiler Arena 3 :
As far as I can remember, first game with an all high peaceweight cast.
Gandhi-of-the-triple-gold-start beats Charlie to Meditation AND Polytheism. And he gets Monotheism on T26 for a sub-T30 triple Holy City! Joao later founds the CoL religion, but Gandhi also gets the Theology and Philosophy religions, the latter making Bombay a quadruple Holy City! Oh, and he would also found the Divine Right religion a bit later...
A few inconsequential early wars are declared (WK vs Hatty, Charlie vs Gandhi).
Of more consequence is the 1v2 Joao faces (Augustus + Charlie) since it leads to his elimination.
Charlie then goes back after Gandhi, triggering the slow conquest of his land by the Indians while their cities start radiating Culture (already at 20K+ on turn 220 without the slider).
Things get interesting when this creates so much border tension with Rome, by far the world's top military power, that Augustus declares on Gandhi. The latter immediately signs peace with Charlie to face that threat.
WK knows easy pickings when he see them: he invades the remnants Holy Rome right away and quickly conquers them.
Bombay falls, putting an end to Gandhi's Cultural dominance dreams. Then Dehli falls, heralding the end of the whole Indian civilization.
Gandhi is down to a single tundra village (soon to be conquered) when Wang Kon makes his move and declares on Augustus: the Romans are much larger but still fielding a Renaissance army while the Koreans are fully industrialized. And then Hatty backstabs WK (or rather, pays him back for his early game aggression?): she's weaker, but at tech parity although she lacks Oil.
After a few cities change hands, they all sign peace.
Augustus takes advantage of the lull to industrialize his armies, and he renews hostilities with the Koreans who stand no chance now.
Spoiler Arena 2 :
Justinian and Pericles get the first religions. Suleiman gets boxed-in hard.
In addition to being the only high peaceweight leader in a low peaceweight game, Pericles utterly fails to spread his religion while Justinian does.
Napoleon starts the dogpile. Then Stalin joins in.
No, wait. Stalin declares on Kublai?!
That war goes nowhere and does nothing except prevent them both from joining the dogpile on Pericles.
Justinian and Suleiman do, though, lest Napoleon gets everything. But too little, too late: Napoleon does get everything, except for the last two cities (desert and tundra) which go to the Byzantines.
And now the world seems to be having a snowballing Napoleon problem...
Of which Suleiman seems unaware as he chooses that moment to drop out of the world's religion in favour of a self-founded faith.
The attack is surprisingly long in coming, and when it does, Napoleon even slows things down by agreeing to peace half-way through through his conquest before resuming hostilities a bit later and finishing off the job this time.
Meanwhile, Stalin has another go at the Mongols, which proves a fatal mistake.
Napoleon is much quicker in making his next move: he attacks Justinian.
But he's taken so long in attacking then conquering Suleiman that he's allowed Justinian to tech up to Assembly Line while he's oddly skipped Military Tradition. So while his troops outnumber the Byzantines 3 to 1, it's knights and rifles vs cavalries and infantries.
And yet, although the French suffer grievous losses, they rout the Byzantines whose last hope comes crashing when the Mongols join the attack against them.
Spoiler Arena 1 :
Pacal and Isabella get the early religions. Isabella spreads hers to the western civs (Frederick, Mehmed), Pacal his to Churchill, while Toku picks up Pacal's minority religion.
Churchill is the first to start plotting (against Toku presumably), but he gets attacked by Mehmed before he can follow through. That attack is a failure as the Ottomans end up losing a city before they sign peace.
Frederick then Mehmed convert to Pacal's religion: Izzy joins Toku in the religious pariahs club.
Toku declares on Churchill: they're number one and number two in power. Border cities get traded back and forth.
Mehmed attacks Isabella.
Left alone, Pacal is already running away with the game, techwise: T144 Liberalism.
The anglo-japanese war ends with Toku the clear winner on the battlefield... yet agreeing to peace without any territorial gain.
Freddy, who ended up boxed-in, is losing more and more tiles to Pacal's culture and slipping into irrelevance.
Mehmed's war is still going but has stalled. Toku, who is now the undisputed power leader, backstabs him.
The Ottomans collapse.
Freddy, leading the runt civ of the game, and still medieval, declares on Pacal who has rifles and is researching Assembly Line... Needless to say, it doesn't go well. Churchill, a more respectable opponent, tries to help, though. But he gets immediately backstabbed by Toku, while Izzy joins Pacal in mopping up the few remaining German cities.
Freddy and Churchill exit the game.
Izzy, still on the warpath then turns round and attacks Toku: both have rifles, but Toku lacks cavalries. Japan is nevertheless much bigger and more powerful than Spain, so unless Pacal gets involved, that doesn't bode well for Izzy.
Speaking of Pacal... he's researching Robotics while Toku is on Military Science and Izzy on Railroad!
Isabella's bold gamble pays off as Pacal invades Japan: she gets to finish second, and, more importantly, she simply gets to live.
Spoiler Rankings :
