BOTM 126 Final Spoiler - Game Over

[DynamicSpirit]

BOTM 126 - Final Spoiler

So how did your game after 1AD go? Did you manage to win?



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[Minou]

Domination Victory in 1520AD

1AD-500AD was slow going. I made a second attempt at Constantinople but had some rough rolls again. A 91% attack failed and another 50-50 or so attack ended up not scratching the defender. As in the BC attempt, I had to settle for grabbing a secondary city. I over-expanded a bit while living off GM and conquest gold, and got down to 20% research while building Pyramids, HG and Colossus and MoM.

Around 700AD Caravels finally crossed the narrow sea to Alex, by chance the same turn Justinian was finally wiped out completely. Alex did not have Alphabet nor did I, so this was a bit anticlimactic. I had originally planned for Space but with tech going so slowly, I decided to go for Domination from this point.

One turn before Astronomy completed (~1000AD), I got a the Master Blacksmith Quest. It turns out I already had the 7 Forges, but I was not sure if Astronomy would advance me to the Renaissance and end the quest so I stopped research for a turn. The quest auto-completed at the start of next turn, giving free Shock to Swordsmen and a free Great Engineer! That was a great boost - I popped the GE for Feudalism and built up a quick dozen Swordsmen and four Galleons to conquer Greece. Incidentally this was the only meaningful Event - I had about a half dozen other ones but they were all trivial (+1 commerce in a plot in 800AD, wow!).

Here came the mistake of the game! I was licking my chops when my Caravels surveyed the piles of Spears waiting to get annihilated by Shock Swords. Oops - of course those were Phalanxes! The damn things look so much like Spears that I completely forgot about them. One of my stacks was actually wiped out at the landing site, but the other managed to hang on and capture the Capital thanks to Medic III Chariot. I almost quit in frustration, but decided to own up to my dumb play. The Galleons returned restocked with Knights a few turns later and made easy work of the rest of Greece.

Meanwhile the mainland was building a second fleet. Five ships filled with Knights, Maces upgraded with conquest gold, and old spare Swords sailed to the Ottomans. They capitulated in 1220AD, followed by China in 1390AD. At some point I captured two cities from Persia but the AP forced me to give one back and I ignored them for the rest of the game since their land was “stringy” and not a very high payoff in terms of tiles per city captured. Japan was the most difficult, I had to pause the war once when a giant stack was about to recapture the capital and had to take almost all their cities before they capitulated in 1500AD. That put my at 61.5% land so I needed two more turns for cities to come out of revolt and pop borders for the final win.

The end game was actually fairly interesting despite being a cake-walk militarily. I was down to negative GPT at 0% by 1250AD and so it required lots of pillaging, trading, Merchant specialists and building wealth to complete the campaign. By the end I was deleting lots of Galleons, Spies, and Workers. At the end I had three turns starting with -130gpt where I just managed to break even by capturing a city or fanning out Knights to pillage improvements.

I think playing again it might have made more sense to leave Justinian alone for trade routes and tech trades given the isolated start, but I can’t resist stealing early Workers…..

 

[ngraner42]

Space 1909

This is my first GOTM in ages. Took out Constantanople with 8 chariots and a warior. Took about 6 losses, but prevailed. I made that my capital a little later.

I just filled up the continent with the plan of a space win. The only interesting event was when the Greeks declared on me. He sent a stack of Caravels and 3 Galeons. I had one Frigate on the other side of the continent. The city he was heading for had a Maceman. I moved 2 Chariots into the city; railroads helped. I then traded Cyrus for 700 gold and upgraded the Chariots to Calvary and the Maceman to an Infintry. I had some additional Macemen and Chariots moving toward the city. He landed his attack force of Trebuchets a Catapult, Macemen and a Pikeman, which I dispatched. A couple turns later my two brand new Battleships sunk half his Navy and then I made peace. That was a fun war.

I left out the other fun part. I had defensive pacts with Cyrus and Togukawa (and their vassal, the Chinese). They all declared and Suliman joined in a few turns later. In the end Suliman had the Greeks as a vassal.

 

[MarleysGh0st]

The Greed quest that I mentioned in the first spoiler paid off nicely with four horse archers, which helped me continue my conquest of the Byzantine Empire. That was completed in 560, leaving me in sole possession of the continent, but with an economy that was barely breaking even at 0% science. And at this point, I still had no idea who was in the rest of the world.

I built up my econonmy, completing the Colossus in 800, and finally contacted Alexander in 1000. Caravels soon unveiled the other powers to my east. They were all of the same religion, and with conquest in mind, I decided to build the AP to block them from building it and uniting against me. I reached liberalism first and took astronomy as my bonus from that in 1320.

I attacked Alexander in 1525 and conquered him in 1605. Then I turned east, vassalizing Tokugawa in 1715, Qin Shi Huang in 1735, Suleiman in 1760, and Darius in 1785. This completed my conquest, but also pushed me over the domination limit, and the game arbitrarily awarded me a domination victory in 1790.

 

[voglchen]

I took out 4 cities of Justinian with swords and catapults pushing him back in the jungle, signed peace for a few techs and attacked later to take more of his land, signed peace to heal up and attacked one last time shortly before my caravel discovered the others all in hinduism loving each other. I was at 15 cities (10 were captured from Justinian) and tech leader. Then went straight to cuirs and galeons to conquer the other continent. Didn't look and they all had a defensive pact with each other
Didn't do much harm, just really slowed me down, especially because I kept my first part of the army on the continent and after going to war this army was pushed on the island next to Persia and was stuck there only capturing 2 cities and waiting. I was permanently shipping troops and vasalling one after the other. The chinese were last and a bit of a pain in the ass with there citydefender promotions and me being too lazy to build cannons and ship them over. but with lots of lost cavalry Ihad everyone vasalled and dominated in 1848

 

[nocho]

I finished this a couple of weeks ago already but seemingly forgot to upload until just now. Don't remember much, other than that I was trying to eek out a late religious victory, when I accidentally hit domination in 1640AD. Also remember killing off Justinian rather soon with chariots, but possibly a bit too soon as I could've used somebody to trade some basic stuff with. Thought too late off trying to bulb towards optics/astro, so it went all rather slow.

 

[sossos]

In the last several decades, there was a deficit of about 400+ gold per decade which drove the solders into madness to conquer and pillage. They should have been disbanded at the last minute, but finally a revolution saved them all to show the mercy of God.

The empire embraces victory with anarchy, which seems the destiny of all mighty conquerors.