[BTS] BOTM 165 Prince Peter Final Spoiler game submitted

[Deckhand]

BOTM 165 - Peter the Grinch

I'm curious:
What was the state of the world when you finally discovered it? How advanced were the AIs? Did they all get along or were they upset with each other? What was religious situation?
Did you notice what they had in common? Did it help them?

How did you achieve victory?
What challenges did you face?
What was fun?

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[krikav]

I had a very fun time playing this map. This is a lower difficulty than I usually play on, which gives much more freedom to fool around.
I did accept the challenge of not mining any gold or silver. The lake gold I avoided at first, but it got tiersome to keep the govenor in check so I just let that pass.

Seeing gold and silver easily accesable while constantly bumping your head on happy cap is something that I think is somewhat analogous to what the Grinch felt when hearing christmas carols. It's something you want, but since it's something for others but not for you, you get grumpy and resentful.

The barren ice and barbarian ridden tundra landscape and isolation from AIs also provided with very nice scenery to build up a desire to RUIN CHRISTMAS for everybody.

Well, thats what I tried to do, and at T248 (1690AD) succeded with that. A conquest victory!

Here is roughly how it played out:

Spoiler :

I did keep a city I took from Mansa for a few turns, to upgrade cuirs to cav on that continent, then I gave it to Pacal and later razed it too.


Now it's back to the icy hermits cave for Peter the Grinch!

 

[krikav]

All the civs where financial. I don't know how much they where helped by that. I got a solid tech lead and they didn't manage to catch up.
Capac didn't even have pikes, and the other AIs had too few pikes to make any difference.
About halfway into ruining the first continent, I was abit worried that Mansa would pick up the pace, since he also got Elizabeth as a peace vassal.
All of my cities save for the capital was being 3-pop or 2-pop whipped as soon as possible they started to build up quite alot of unhappiness. So my techrate stagnated.
As I lost AIs to trade with, I also got more and more deprived of happiness.
A few trade missions and selling some techs did get me a small fortune (had about 3-5k gold for most of the game) which I had troubles spending fast enough. I did get to rifling eventually with only my capital though and upgraded my cuirs.

Mansa did get Astro and settled one new city on the Wilhelm-continent, but other than that he didn't put up any resistance.

 

[Major Tom]

We could not mine gold to stay in the real competition?

Anyway, went for diplomatic after looking on their favorite civics. Easy bunch to please. Libbed radio after bulbing galore. Won on first voting after gifting communism in true Russian revolution spirit. Would have been more appropriate to play Stalin tho, but red flag could do.

 

[krikav]

We could not mine gold to stay in the real competition?

Anyway, went for diplomatic after looking on their favorite civics. Easy bunch to please. Libbed radio after bulbing galore. Won on first voting after gifting communism in true Russian revolution spirit. Would have been more appropriate to play Stalin tho, but red flag could do.

As far as I have understod it, the "challenger class" is adding nothing to actual competition, it's only for possible braging rights.
First time I tried it out, and I did it for RP-reasons, I have a very hard time that my save will perform well in this competition.

Gifting communism was hilarious.
Long live the revolution!

 

[nocho]

I pondered for a while what VC to go for and somehow decided that religious would be fun. Got there rather late in 1670AD.

Mansa had built the AP in Christ and I had got some spread. Fully spread to myself, went on to conquer Mansa and spread to the other civs. When finally the vote came up, Huyana had decided to spread Christ to himself to quite some cities, despite being a firm buddhist. By then I had Willem and the Persians at friendly through free religion shared civic, but didn't have enough votes because of HC. I decided to go and vassal HC, but saw a shortcut in bringing him up to friendly, by going out of FR and taking budd, crowning myself king (HR, HC's fav civic) despite having been in Rep for ages since I scooped the Mids in the BCs thanks to a GE. Turn before the second vote Huyana was at friendly but the diplo screen wouldn't give me his votes. Luckily he was prepared to declare on Willem (and the Dutch vassal of the Americas, spun off on a island north of it), so bribed him and declared myself for an extra mutual struggle bonus. That secured the win.

Fun game, despite subobtimal play. Thanks!