How did it go? Did you rebuild your shattered empire and make the world again fear the mighty Genghis Khan? What role did General Ögedei Khan and your Ship of the Line play?
Hmm, oddly enough I was the first to submit and the first to report here. Too much time on my hands, maybe?
I played the contender save and did manage to win, although I doubt any of my opponents actually feared the wimpy Genghis Khan in my game.
In the BC's I expanded fast to 9 cities and tried to set up a decent base from where to expand later on.
But after getting the impression it would be an uphill battle to conquer those emperor AIs at tech parity (not mentioning the buffed up True Mongols), I figured out it would be much simpler and safer to pursue a sneaky cultural victory, while the rest of the world was too busy fighting Senggum to notice it.
At that point I had almost all of my cities as Buddhists, thanks to Darius' missionaries, and was able to bulb Philo for Taoism and later tech to Divine Right for Islam. Took Nationalism from Lib, teched Constitution for Rep beakers, then shut down research and cruised to a very late (for GOTM/HoF standards) but uneventful finish in the 1850's.
The Ship of the Line was very useful - it killed a lot of naval units and managed to get to Combat 4 and even got me a 2nd GG, before being defeated late in the game. Then both GG's were settled at the capital just for the representation beakers. On hindsight it would have been better to attach it to the ship.
Upon watching the game replay feature at the end, I noticed Moscow was conquered as early as 3880BC or so - but the other AIs were doing quite a good job battling Senggum at the NE corner of the ring. It was fun watching huge bizantine armies crossing my territory on their way to the front. I even sent a spare missionary as a war correspondent to watch the action up there! Too bad I didn't get airships to get a glimpse of the super city inside the mountains at the map center.
Very good job with the map creation and settings, Noble Zarkon!
Used the ship of the line to explore the map counter-clockwise. The ship was destroyed after meeting Carthage. I didn't explore the starting land fully...
Expanded peacefully, preparing keshiks and catapults for the invasion of Persia. Saw a Byzantine stack coming from the W, but it just crossed my territory. Unaware of the situation, I thought it would attack Persia so I rushed my attack on Persia. The Byzantine didn't attack Persia. I could conquer a city, but Persia got it back. The conquest was very slow because I had to rebuild an army.
The end of the conquest was a bit easier because Senggum was attacking Persia from the N. I was about to conquer the last Persian city when a stack of death appeared from the N (cavalry, airships, riflemen). This was the beginning of an irresistible conquest. Senggum had infantry and tanks when I retired at 1900AD.
I mentioned in the first spoiler that very early on, I had spotted a frigate sailing west through the northern sea. Well, at 1 AD, it appeared in my territorial waters in the southern sea. My Ship of the Line rushed back from the north to sink it. Luckily, it had paused to bombard my city, or I would have lost more than the one fishing boat it did sink. After that, my SOL didn't really play a significant role in the game. Later on, a pair of frigates would sail together; later than that, it would be a swarm of frigates; and much later, it would be destroyers!
I continued to play peacefully, working to eventually get Military Trad. and Cuirrassiers. I met Ramses in 760; for some reason, he still only had one city! (After watching the recap movie, this wasn't because of any enemy aggression. He just...didn't expand!?) Darius had a city, Harappan, to the northwest, which was under attack by Senggum. I kept one chariot up there, basically as an observer.
I was first to Liberalism, in 1320, and by 1440 I had Military Trad. Now I could build my Cuirrassiers (and I had one GM to send on a trade mission, although I hadn't build enough Keshiks to upgrade) but I saw that Senggum had Cuirs, as well! As I built up my stack, this was the big decision point for my game. In a way, this was like the COVID-themed game we had, with everyone now at war with Senggum the way everyone should have been at war with the Pathogens. So, I could have taken the cooperative path, sending my stack to join those that Darius and Justinian already had besieging the capital of Ganzhou. (They were making pitifully slow progress wearing down its defensives, with just one catapult in each of their stacks. ) With that approach, I might have captured Ganzhou and the cities beyond that. But Darius and Justinian were just as likely to take their share of the spoils, and Darius was already ahead of me in population, territory, science, etc. I was unlikely to gain any advantage in this war. Now, if the mechanics of this game had truly embraced the spirit of cooperation, I could have signed a permanent alliance with the other AI (or at least with Darius) and this wouldn't have been a concern. But, alas, this was not an option.
So...I decided to be selfish and take the uncooperative approach. Even though Justinian was friendly with me (and had just offered a defensive pact), I attacked him in 1525. The war wasn't as easy as I had wished; Justinian now had Cataphracts, which matched my Cuirs, and he also had Pikemen to wear me down. After capturing three cities, I signed a ceasefire in 1575, then resumed the war in 1640. Meanwhile, Senggum had begun producing riflemen, and had eliminated the besieging AI stacks.
Ultimately, I took all of Justinian's cities in the western end of the continent, but he still had one city he'd captured from barbs, east of the Egyptian territory. (Ramses had finally expanded to six cities, between Darius's southern and northern territories.) I signed a peace treaty with Justinian in 1760 and started building up my newly acquired territory. And slowly, I sent my forces north, where Darius and Senggum had continued their struggle.
Timing is everything! Having earlier researched Rifling and Railroads (much needed to get my troops to the front faster), I research Assembly Line in 1900, immediately after Senggum had taken Harappan from Darius. Now my stack, which had still been sitting to the east "observing" the fight, counterattacked and put Harappan under my own flag! With the other AI now playing supporting roles in my offensive, Senggum's other cities would steadily follow. Chief among them was Ganzhou (with seven world wonders) in 1912 and Moscow (with thirteen wonders!) in 1945. Senggum was now building tanks, but he couldn't produce enough of them to stop the tide.
During this time, having built airships, I discovered Senggum's last surprise. Capturing Xingqing, I decided, would have to be a long-term goal involving nukes and paratroops.
Meanwhile, I was still on the path for domination, while Hannibal was working on culture (with Carthage already legendary) and Darius had started building his spaceship (but was still a number of techs away from all that he needed). I attacked Hannibal in 1953 and by 1967 I had captured all of the Carthaginian Empire. Next, I attacked Ramses in 1970 and Justinian in 1976, and by 1977 their empires were both entirely mine.
That still left Darius, who had a formidable force of modern armor and mech infantry. Senggum still had Xingqing; I was slowly (probably too slowly) building paratroops and sending them through airports to two captured cities within paradrop range. But by spamming settlers to all the worthless bits of land that still hadn't been claimed by others, and then by pushing up my culture slider, I was able to trip the Domination limit for a victory in 1985 without having to deal with either of them. Terribly slow, but I wonder if anyone else will do better, given the unusual circumstances Noble Zarkon gave us in this game. Thanks for the challenge!
For fun, I continued playing the game, to try to finally finish off Senggum. Darius sabotaged my Manhattan Project, so after my fighters and bombers wore down his city defenses, I went in with my paratroopers alone, and eliminated my arch enemy in 1992. Darius is still formidable. Maybe if I'm bored, I'll play that out, in a modern war of superior numbers vs. superior tech.
Like others I killed the Sengum scout and used the SoL to explore. I suspected a ringworld separating my SoL from the frigate, discovered to be mistaken when I reached the NW corner. Going back ''innerlane'' on the east side again I noticed Egypt's single city with no seafood improved, 500BC or so. What was this guy doing? Then next turn 2 frigates end right beside me. Oops. Luckily I could enter the city and snipe both ships from there. Thinking I eliminated the threat for while I freely explored around the central island , but then encountered another pair of frigates. This time there was no escape. SoL lost. Auch.
Up to 1Ad or so I built up to 10 cities ''from ivory to ivory''. Raising happiness was a problem so I was happy to get a deal with Darius to provide me with stone, much sooner than I could hook it up myself, and aim for Mids. 16 long turns, knowing that Sengum plops one wonder after another, and there it was.(775BC).
Around 500AD I had Eng and started to build up forces with the intention to invade Persia. Right then Justinian DoWed me. I always thought of him as a peacekeeper. I must have looked really weak to him. Well I didn;t have an army just yet., so it took a while before I started to conquer on him. And the march through his land was long, so almost 1200AD it was when he was eliminated. All this time this war was like a stone around my neck, pulling my techrate down. I have to whip CH and a set of banks to gear up the Economy. I got to guilds by now, working my way to cuirs. And now that I had an army I immediately move on to attack Persia (well, after a 120 years heal and march from west to east). This war went more swift. Peace at 1510AD. I chose to let him alive and have him keep some cities between me and Sengum.
Now I felt big enough to test the strength of the so called True Mongols. I had no idea what to expect. Clearly they were an era ahead in tech. Early 1100AD they reach Lib. They eliminate Egypt 1150AD. Somewhere 1200AD they switch to Emancipation. 1515AD, the turn after peace with Darius they complete Kremlin. At this point I'm running a golden age and speeding through Eco and Lib +civic changes to GunP 1540AD (I already have MilTrad). Over the course of the past wars I've collected 5 GG + starting one. This means I have 1 healer + Karakorum with HE can do 10XP naval, 17XP mounted, 13XP else. One promising observation is that Hannibal has a foothold near Moscow and Persia conquered Thebes. Apparently they withstand Sengum. I peak in a few Sengum cities and see only longbows. So, okay let's start moving...........
Well.... that changes everything. Suddenly he has rifles and cavalry !! He conquers Thebes back on Darius. I pull back. He conquers the next city on Darius. But he does not really have great numbers. I can handle his wounded units so I conquer that city. Now I have a surprise for him. I upgrade my trebs to cannons. If he just lets me attack this struggle can be handled. And he does, after all he is a Minor Civ. He spreads his units thin over cities and forts and attacks now and then with just a few units. I upgrade my navy to frigate/galleon right before that can of worms opens. I settle the east side of the central island to improve my logistics (and these cities are reasonably good). Of course not long after he appears with SoL, so I have to keep my navy in ports most of the time. And he has a nasty set of airships.
I gain control over the former Egyptian area. I reach rifling 1685AD, so military tech parity?? Well no, a few turns later I face infantry. The survival rate of my cannons drops dramatically. I head for artillery and with those I plow through most of the northern land sleeve. Halfway I reach the glorious moment of naval superiority with Combustion ....... or so I think. Sengum gets there the same turn. Well this will be his last trick. His empire is crumbling. I need to work my way to fighters/bombers/paratroopers to attack the central city. He has infantry there . I feared he would add machine guns. He only got one on the turn I attacked this last Sengum city in 1886AD. And with the total defeat of the True Mongols I reach domination victory.
And so the next report beats my time by a century.
Well done, Powerfaker. I'm surprised Justinian declared war on you. With everyone at war with Senggum, I thought the AI would be rather reluctant to start another war. What was the religious situation in your game? In mine, everyone on my continent was Buddhist, except Senggum, who went Confucian. Hannibal was on his own in Judaism, and helpfully made the AP irrelevant by building it, himself.
And so the next report beats my time by a century.
Well done, Powerfaker. I'm surprised Justinian declared war on you. With everyone at war with Senggum, I thought the AI would be rather reluctant to start another war. What was the religious situation in your game? In mine, everyone on my continent was Buddhist, except Senggum, who went Confucian. Hannibal was on his own in Judaism, and helpfully made the AP irrelevant by building it, himself.
In my game, Justinian also declared on me - out of the blue. He had the same religion, I was gifting him resources, was pleased with me etc. At some point, he sent a big stack through my territory, which was marching toward Senggum (sigh!), I was fighting Egyptians then (Darius conquered at 1AD). Then, when his stack was mid-way in may territory - he suddenly DoWed me! Was pleased just turn before, checked the auto-save. This game is random personalities, though - maybe he is an uber-backstabber like Kathy?
I had another rage-quit in my first game, when Persia showed up with an insurmountable stack. I can't submit because I recently deleted a bunch of saves. I did play it a second time, though, (not to completion, just to about the same point) which is why I thought I should report on my findings. In both my games, I used the same strategies, which was basically CS-sling/REX/Pyramids for Repr.
The main differences were all luck, random stuff.
In Game 1, I lost my Ship rather quickly to a couple frigates. This dropped my power respective to neighbors significantly. It also led to my coast being routinely choked and pillaged by frigates. Persia declared on me despite being pleased and sharing religion. I took one of his cities, but then his stack showed up (grens vs my melee) and took it back, and took my best city, and was just going to march because I had nothing to offer for peace.
In the second game, my Ship was never attacked. Frigates pillaged and choked Justinian instead. Persia looked northward for his expansionist wars. I was able to reach tech advantage, and was on a path to pick any victory I wanted.
So, in conclusion, I was disappointed that my first attempt went so badly, but sort of relieved that it could have worked fine with just a few small things outside my control. C'est la vie. No submission this time.
You not only got Oracle, but also CS from it? and Pyramids? This game, I did not build a single wonder, was not even trying seeing insane speed with which Senggum built them. Just got SH and a couple shrines from conquering Persia & Egypt
It looked to go well enough, but I also got backstabbed by Justinian and then Darius joined the party and I basically rage quit around 400-500AD. Justinian had a sizeable stack traversing the whole of my territory and then turned back on me just as he reached Persian lands, while I was just going economically full throttle towards cuirs, but without any military to speak of yet when I got attacked.
It seems I was lucky to have landed the GLH and had what looked like a good base empire of 10 or 11 cities. Early game I had attached the general to the ship and gave it navigation and the GG extra movement bonus for a 5-movement ship which was pretty nice. I rounded the world through the outer canal early, then had the interior seas mapped out as well. Unfortunately the ship got sunk though by a double frigate attack. Senggum had wiped out not only the Russians but also the Egyptians so it looked like a tough showdown later on, but it wasn't to be.
Looks interesting, and thanks for having a normal game. I came back to the game a couple weeks ago and looked over the active BOTMs and didn't fancy so much weird stuff. By all means, I am not opposed to it in general, I have created several BOTM maps with weird settings, or at least not your bog standard stuff, but the Khan game for example looked a bit much to me. So cheers for this one
One heck of a map and game. The end did leave a bittersweet taste, but more about that later.
By 1AD I was building catapults and elephants to wage war on Justinian. That took a lot longer than I thought, not least due to slow movement, but he was dead in 800AD or thereabouts. Because Darius looked weak at the time, I hoped to be able to continue the war on him with the same army, but then he teched super-fast on the back of a 50% shrine + Colossus (and FIN). Change of plans. I went for Engineering and trebs. Sadly he did the same, and got Engineering 1-2 turns after me. In 1200AD I had 25 trebs and 22 elephants, finally mostly in position. A Keshik also kept tabs on the action in Pi-Ramesses and Memphis (Senggum first took Memphis, then Darius. Senggum also controlled Pi-Ramesses on the NE coast). Surprised Senggum's knights didn't take the city off Darius' hands, but his own knights and the odd longbow managed to hold onto it. My economy is still in a slow trickle, I'm slowly building funds while slow-teching Civil Service, and waiting for a pair of GSs for bulbing Astro (not sure if this was wise, but it's what I did). Spent all my points to steal Feudalism from Darius, in a crap city he settled in my face.
In the same turn it is time to face the music...
Spoiler:
It was rough for elephants up against castles and pikes, but through the war I managed to get enough points to put a city or two in revolt, which helped. Mostly the spies just got caught before being able to even get into position though, which reminded me why I dislike the whole darn mechanic. Helped to get a 25gpt shrine in Persepolis, though. Further north we captured the Colossus -- great news, you'd think. Unfortunately I didn't get one turn of nice coast tiles out of it, because I had postponed CS too long already, and now had to do the Astro double-bulb, and then fetch CS. Not for Buro this time, but irrigation and maces, and getting further in the tech tree. I didn't want to bungle the Astro bulb.
Taking a step back, in 1180AD our military overtook Senggum's. The Ship of the Line was daring to scout the northern edge, where it found Moscow, with longbows, pikes and knights. In 1330AD his power suddenly spiked up something nasty. Sure enough, once I found another city, it had rifles!! At this point I felt pretty terrible about my chances. His power kept going up and up and up, so I wondered if he had cannons already too. At this point my most advanced tech was Engineering, Code of Laws and Feudalism. Very far behind, indeed.
In 1370AD we got Civil Service and started a Golden Age with probably a GS, briefly after bulbing Astro. In 1390AD I steal Guilds from Darius, for again all points. Before losing tech view, I saw he was teching Gunpowder, and would get there in only 6 turns. He had 7 cities left, and time was of the essence. Before the landbridge leading up to Ramesses (and Senggum's rifles), I split the army and approached both "tongues" of the land.
Side point: I've no idea how this is possible, but Darius had -1 relations with Hannibal -- and was Pleased with him. Never seen something like that.
Darius' days were numbered, but our economy was crap (building wealth to break even at 0%) and our army no match for Senggum's. The hope was this:
Steal Guilds
Get a GS (it took several tries)
Bulb Chemistry
Get to Steel for Cannons
Upgrade trebs
In 1535AD, at peace with 1-city Darius (the aforementioned captured Memphis), the army rolls up towards Thebes after having declared on Ramesses, and we get the long awaited message about Senggum winning Liberalism. No idea what he took. Alas, the Ship of the Line is alive and well. I attached a GG to it at some point, and took the First strikes line. It was a good call. It would often go undamaged after sinking the upteenth caravel, and survived many encounters with frigates too.
Spoiler:
At this point I thought Ramesses was Gandhi, largely due to the base attitude with us. I was probably wrong about that, and had long stopped caring about who these chumps were anyway. They were going to die no matter their identity
The power graph looks a little scary you might say. But the next turn, in 1550AD, we finally get to Steel, and the upgrading can begin.
Spoiler:
While trying to get that GS for bulbing Chemistry, I got a low-chance GSpy (and another later). Annoying at the time, but he would come in quite handy as a scout, and was sent north and then west into Senggum's core. He spotted rifles up and down the aisles, but it's nice to get a better look at his land and forces. Due to this, I was also seriously considering a more espionage-based economy. We were faaaar behind techwise after all, and here we got a GSpy on our hands. One thing he noticed, was a big stack of rifles, cavalry and trebs (phew! no cannons yet) moving east across the landbridge towards our position. In 1605AD it arrives. Both Darius and Ramesses are dead at this point, after we captured the strategically very important cities of Memphis and Pi-Ramesses. The fate of the game would essentially be decided right here.
Spoiler:
Put some workers in harm's way, hoping he would bite, but he didn't. It may have prompted him to move in that direction though. I had no way of knowing where he would move, and he may just as well have gone for Alexandria (it was closer in airline after all). Or gone against Memphis.
After some considering, I landed on this gambit. I move all but one musket out of Pi-Ramesses. He will take it, and we will move into the forest where his stack is now parked (well, it was the next turn).
So, errr, not going quite to plan. Damn borders expanded a tone more than I thought, so we need two turns to get there, most likely getting farmed on the way. Sure, we have cannons, but they are easy pickings for his well-promoted rifles. Never mind muskets and elephants. Suicided a knight to bust that crucial road, so he wouldn't be able to snipe Memphis with the brunt of our army on the path towards Pi-Ramesses.
So the gambit didn't quite go to plan, but we managed to roll into that forest without losing too many guys to rifle-farming. And once there, we were better protected and could slam into him. This is why I was concerned he would attack us in Memphis, which was on a hill. It would be harder to pull off wiping his stack. From what I recall we weren't able to deal with him in one turn. Not enough guys, and I was kinda shocked to see that even with rifles torns to shreds by cannons, max collateral/direct damage, our knights and elephants still faced reasonably tough fights. They were not gimmes. But we got rid of him
That felt like a huge victory, possible game deciding. He could have wiped us out there and then, which would have been very hard to come back from given such a tech disadvantage. But from here on, it was time to heal up our considerable wounds, and then go on the offensive.
Spoiler:
One stack invades from the east, and another takes to the sea. Now I was glad to have bulbed Astro after all.
Was going to land on the west side of Ganzhou (shorter to the city down the coast), but a rifle had very indecently parked himself there, and it would be way too expensive with amphibious attacks, so we landed on the east side instead.
Ganzhou was a very nice price, with loads of wonders, including MoM. We launched a Golden Age right away, now for 12 turns. The economy was still pretty dire, and we needed to get to Rifling and beyond, and be able to tech again within the next 200 years.
In an earlier spoiler thread I mentioned that Senggum must have started with Astronomy, because we came across a workboat of his that tried to escape the Ship of the Line across clear ocean. I also thought he had Chemistry, because we came across so many frigates. But he did not. We sank many caravels, which he would have upgraded (cheaply) if he had Chemistry. But NOW he did. Suddenly the GSpy spotted 20+ Frigates in the northern water. Holy smokes!! He has also had Physics and Airships for quite a while. Not done too much with them, thankfully, but it's frustrating that cannons keep getting hit. Good thing we had an absolute shedload of them, and that I spent several GGs to upgrade them to CR3 (the capital could produce them with its 3 GGs (and Vassalage), but we needed more production than that).
Again it was a hunt for a GS (or GM) to extend the Golden Age. It failed two times, but finally we got the needed person to launch a 3-GP golden age. I had to starve down a size 14-15 city to improve the odds. Hannibal had settled several cities on the central continent, and I had landed a GSpy there for more exploration, and possible infiltration of either Senggum or Hannibal. I didn't want that guy to get popped, so I launched the GA with the GSpy in Senggum's core. The two others were in the capital, so with that the GSpy+GEng+GM extended the GA by 12 turns. It was either on the last turn of the previous GA, or the turn after it ended. Had planned to go back into Slavery, but we never did. Not for the rest of the game.
So what about the Ship of the Line? It had sunk an obscene amount of caravels and also frigates. It was now on guard duty on the south coast of Senggum's core, as our army continued westwards. Then, out of the blue, it got assaulted by not one, not two, but FOUR frigates (I had the screen over it at 'next turn'). Normally they'd stand no chance one by one, but this was one hell of a lucky frigate. It had 1.8% attack odds, and almost sunk it. Which is quite a feat given that the GGed SoL has 3-6 first strikes and practically sunk the frigate in that bout. SoL survived that first frigate, but was down to 20/100 HP, so the rest had an easy match. Such a shame too. That first frigate that almost killed it, was the 50th XP (for another promotion). 20 from a GG, but given the odds of just about all fights (many defensive), it probably had 30 kills. Very sad moment. But only a handful of turns after this, Senggum sported Ship of the Lines too, so its time would probably not have lasted much more anyway (in active duty). From time to time I checked the Military Advisor, and despite fairly limited map view (no airships), Senggum had a count of 25+ Frigates. Many were now tormenting Hannibal, and I had put an explorer over there to keep tabs on him.
Speaking of Hannibal, he was teching like a best too. In 1760AD he was two turns from Electricity, and he'd pretty soon after that get to Mass Media. Didn't build the UN, though. He had built the AP though, and at some point we had +8 "You voted for us"
Back to the leftover GSpy. With Hannibal teching so fast, and with a few small cities on the central continent (and therefore without security bureaus), I decided to pop the GSpy there, after having some spies in position. Suddenly our state religion Buddhism spread to one of those cities, but without spies, so I had to ship some between the cities. Tech steals would be much cheaper there, like almost half. Throughout the entire game we had horrible luck with it though. 74% to steal techs, and they'd fail one after the other, time and again. However, we did succeed sometimes too, and it felt crucial that two of the buggars failed to get caught, and stole Liberalism and Communism. Actually, one of them still got caught, but after stealing the tech. With that, and 4 turns left of the 24-turn GA, we changed civics to Free Speech - Free Religion - Communism (and still staying in Caste and HR). This would be our end-game civics as no more GPs got produced.
As the game progressed, I invested more into espionage buildings, and with better multipliers we could passive create hundreds of EPs per turn, and actually more EPs than when going full tilt. Still a pain to move the spies and then wait the 5 turns (and hope they don't get caught). But even later when we were at war with Hannibal, and therefore no trade route bonus (nor religion for that matter), it was cheaper to steal them than tech them ourselves. We could instead focus more on the (sort of) military techs, like Railroads, Combustion (bye-bye Frigates!!!) and Steam Power. Much, much later, we also stole Corporation. I waited the longest time because we had the GLH.
Okay, this is getting very long in the tooth now, so time to wrap things up (slowly...). We kicked Senggum off the land and invaded Hannibal. Planned to land in two places, north and south (from ex-Senggum and ex-Justinian's lands), but decided to split the northern force and thereby land in three places across two turns. Hannibal had considerable forces of rifles and cavs, and eventually cannons and the odd MG (plus frigates ofc), but we ran him into the ground really. Too many cannons and too many units swarmed him.
The Victory screen stated 1 rival left, so I assumed it would be Conquest when Hannibal was done for. Had already seen that Senggum had a city hidden behind a mountain wall, which would require paratroopers. While the war on Hannibal's core was dwindling down, I sent whatever units I could find towards the central continent, where Senggum had a last city (well, second last) and Hannibal had 4-5. Wasn't able to get to all the cities in that last turn, but with transports and the armada of galleons, I was going to throw the kitchen sink at his 11 last units, even if it took amphibious assaults. We did indeed need that, but had plenty of units within reach from transports, so it wasn't such a close call as I feared. The last city fell, and Hannibal was wiped out.
Land count was still a fair bit short of 64% and domination, but we had captured Sistine and many Hannibal cities were coming out of revolt, so it was hard to stay under. Went through all the cities and microed thing, counted tiles and the lot, and figured we'd get to next turn possibly 10 tiles under the limit. I wanted a conquest win.
Next turn.
Huh? Nothing happened. No win.
Well, well.... so we need to kill off that smug prick in his mountain too, huh? Despite there now being 0 rivals left? Weird, and actually really disappointing given I had hoped to win conquest here, and had done so much microing to avoid domination. That could have been achieved rather long ago just by spamming cities on the available central land (and the two snippets in the east corners).
We actually only lacked Flight to unlock Paratroopers, and I had some submarines, but at this point it would have been impossible to avoid domination for long enough. Cities were coming out of revolt. And we'd need time to first get Flight (4 turns) and then get paratroopers without slavery. Get them into position and lob them over the mountain. Then kill 12 rifles and whatever else was in there. Impossible. So instead I went through the cities again and counted tiles, to make sure we'd get over the domination limit next turn. Might have happened anyway, but I wanted to make sure, and not waste even more turns.
So then.... Domination win it is.
Spoiler:
Could be done much quicker, I'm sure -- although the game could also have gone rather differently had we run into the quicksand in Persia, or not been able to deal with Senggum's fearsome stack. All in all I'm pleased about the win, at times it looked hard just to win, being so far adrift techwise. But like I started out, being unable to get the conquest I felt I deserved was bittersweet
Killed a few guys along the way too. Lots and lots of boats in there, and the great majority were legitimate kills (not inside cities).
Thanks for your story, Pangaea. My game was pretty similar to yours, except you beat me by over a hundred years. My do-or-die battle was at Thebes, where Senggum came at me with 50-some units against my kitchen sink of 34 or so that had just captured it. I'm anxious to run the replay tool once this is over to compare games. I never saw any living AI from up north, just Senggum. I was very resentful all game of Hannibal, content and unharried in his splendid isolation. Just as I was taking the last two ringworld cities from Senggum, Hanny attacked me! Briefly took one of my cities, too. I was under the mistaken impression that once I got to 60% (or 70?) in UN votes I could vote myself winner. That was incorrect--as with the AP, somebody else also has to vote for you to put you over the threshold. Meanwhile, Hanny was about 14 turns from getting a 3rd city to Legendary (before he DoWed me, which slowed things down). So I went with Plan B: settle all the open space I could for Domination. While I was waiting for culture expansion and cities to come out of revolt, I captured a few of Hanny's cities, but eliminating him would have taken a good while. I also dropped a few paratroopers behind Senggum's mountain wall, but they didn't last long. So yeah, a little anticlimactic, but at that point I was just happy to finish and submit before the deadline.
Thanks @Xcalibrator. It's always kind of concerning to write detailed about your game (before the deadline), because, really, anybody still playing can still read the thread and see the marks they need to beat. Hopefully nobody does that, but people probably can if they don't uphold the gentleman's code. Looks like I'm first to domination for now, but I don't really expect that to last. Somebody going for that specifically can just spam the land and get there with much less war effort.
Hannibal never built the UN in my game, despite getting Mass Media pretty early. Maybe because it was just me and him left then? No idea. Or maybe he was working on it when I invaded him. Wasn't sure about the rules there, but seemed to recall we needed somebody else to vote for you to win.
Loaded up the save again to look at what I stole. Unfortunately the log doesn't state the spy business, only when techs are gotten one way or another, so this will be based on memory, with possibly some mistakes. Didn't go fully into espionage in this game, probably captured more spy buildings than we built ourselves, but we did build at least a handful of +50% buildings, and later a few jails in big cities to try to deal with Zeus-boosted war weariness (and the former empire unhappy in Senggum's cities was off the scale). However, we did run a bunch of Mercantilism-spies and mostly filled the slots in the cities with intelligence agencies.
Feudalism (Darius)
Guilds (Darius)
Literature or Music (think it was one of these, possibly from Darius)
Theology (very late, from Hannibal)
Banking (don't recall from who, but it was with the last spy in the last turn of a GA, after several failed attempts, so it was crucial to get for the civic switch. Would have sucked to lose out on that, with practically no trade routes anyway)
Philosophy (Hannibal)* (actually, I may have self-teched this since it was so cheap and I was concerned about not having enough spies for the more important steals)
Nationalism (Hannibal)*
Constitution (Hannibal)
Democracy (Hannibal)
Printing Press?? (May have done this myself)
Military Tradition (Hannibal - very late, I never built any Cuirs, and only some Cavs in the very late game)
Corporation (Hannibal - very late, but he was doing Assembly Line when I invaded, and I intended to upgrade some rifles to infantry, but never did)
Liberalism (Hannibal)
Communism (Hannibal)
[Physics was self-teched in one turn, think the report above was incorrect and I got another GS that bulbed this for around 3000 ]
Electricity (Hannibal)
Radio (Hannibal)
Mass Media (Hannibal)
* It's possible one of these was from Senggum. Think I stole something from him, as I had some spies in Ganzhou before taking it, but it's also possible I only had enough points to get him out of Emancipation
In addition, I had to switch them out of emancipation several times. Also, on the turn I declared on Hannibal, I put him from Universal Suffrage to HR (so he couldn't buy units), and from Emancipation to Caste. The emancipation thing was so important, that I'd do it with any spy in position even without any bonuses (and holy mother how often they'd fail).
Looking at that list is kinda nuts now in hindsight, and many of them were stolen just because I could, but didn't really benefit me all that much. However, Feudalism and Guilds from Darius was huge, and the same with Liberalism and Communism. Going into State Property was game changing, and we saved 400 gpt or something like that (and I no longer had to bother with courthouses). Plus better workshops and hammers of course. Electricity was nice (and expensive) because we had about 80 windmills at the time, but it's not that big of a deal unless you need to get up to Mass Media for the UN (or Industrialism, but we never got that far).
The AIs can be so odd. Senggum was plaguing Hannibal with Frigates up and down his coast, but Hannibal didn't have Chemistry yet, despite having Radio, so basically couldn't do anything about it. Eventually he hauled ass up through to Railroads, but he took his sweet time, and by then my destroyers had mostly cleared the oceans anyway.
Anyway, a very fun map. How long did you take to design that @Noble Zarkon? Presumably you built everything up from the ground, every single tile? That is what I did with the Game of Thrones-inspired map eons ago. Lots of work, but fun as well to try to make a semi-realistic map.
Hi @Pangea, thanks for the detailed and very lively report, I love to read them. It really sucks that you didn’t get the conquest victory, I also assumed that killing Senggum was not necessary for conquest and was going for it. I am not submitting this one, I accidentally disqualified myself early on, but was playing along to fun until battery in my old laptop died. I think I was around 1300ad, with Persia & Egypt conquered, in the proces of conquering Justy and fighting only minor stacks from True Mongols. My conquest was going very well - Persia conquered in bc -but I am not sure if I will not fall too much behind in tech, my economy is a complete crap this game, you seem to be doing much better.
I also noticed that stealing techs was very difficult this game, my spies were constantly getting caught, especially by Justinian
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) With that approach, I might have captured Ganzhou and the cities beyond that. But Darius and Justinian were just as likely to take their share of the spoils, and Darius was already ahead of me in population, territory, science, etc. I was unlikely to gain any advantage in this war. Now, if the mechanics of this game had truly embraced the spirit of cooperation, I could have signed a permanent alliance with the other AI (or at least with Darius) and this wouldn't have been a concern. But, alas, this was not an option.
Capturing Xingqing, I decided, would have to be a long-term goal involving nukes and paratroops. 
and Pyramids? 
when going full tilt. Still a pain to move the spies and then wait the 5 turns (and hope they don't get caught). But even later when we were at war with Hannibal, and therefore no trade route bonus (nor religion for that matter), it was cheaper to steal them than tech them ourselves. We could instead focus more on the (sort of) military techs, like Railroads, Combustion (bye-bye Frigates!!!) and Steam Power. Much, much later, we also stole Corporation. I waited the longest time because we had the GLH.
Nothing happened. No win. 
