I went with the contender save, but it proved to be just a bit too tough for me. I retired in 1937. It was an interesting ride the last ~17 years. I'll get back to that.
I started out by putting my 2nd city south on the bay. Between the fast border pops from SoZ and then the Great Artist that I used to culture bomb my 2nd city, I grabbed a lot of land pretty quickly. I expected a lot of competition for space, but that turned out not to be a huge deal. The barbs ruined a number of my improvements, but I wasn't seriously hurt by them. I cut off the expansion of the Bush People and kept them small. I eventually took them out with Maces.
I felt like I was in pretty good shape at that point, and then I got Optics and met the Cyclopses. They had every tech that it was possible for me to research. Although, somehow in trading maps with them I got the navigation bonus. That turned out to be important.
I think I was around 0.40 power rating with them, but soon they turned on a flood of espionage points that never shut off. I never got any information after that.
I knew if I was going to have any chance of catching up I needed to get bigger than them. I took out the Plains People relatively slowly, and got Galleons churned out to go conquer the tundra. I kept Hera around because I could occasionally trade techs with her. So as we entered the Modern Era, my team had about 45 cities to the cyclopses' 37. But as with other reports, they're population was insane. Over 50% of the world population with 33% of the cities.
My plan to catch up might possibly have worked if it hadn't been for the UN. They put up a vote for Environmentalism. I should've defied, but I wasn't thinking about Enviro being an Economic civic just like State Property. I literally lost 600 gpt in one turn because of that.
So, for a long time it didn't seem like the Cyclopses were going to even build the Apollo Program. However, by 1900 they finally kicked the space program into full gear. I was frantically trying to get modern military techs while ignoring purely space techs. I was building up an army, but not super fast as I didn't have the cash for mass upgrades. I also started cranking out the Transports. Finally, shortly after 1920, the Cyclops space mission launched. I have no idea what game mechanic controls which capital the ship launches from, but I saw it launch from Sicyon instead of Megalopolis, and I said 'hey, there's a chance'
The pink border south of Sicyon was exactly 6 tiles from a land tile directly adjacent to the capital. So I gathered up Mech Inf, Tanks, Artillery, Marines, SAM Inf and set sail. I had a group of 8 transports unload next to Sicyon in 1929, supported by a single Carrier with 3 Fighters. I also landed 3 other transports next to other cities nearby to basically sew confusion. Somehow, it all worked. Despite overwhelming air superiority, the Cyclopses didn't manage to touch my main strike force. The next turn, I burned Sicyon and brought down their spaceship.
That was the high point of the game, though. Poseidon and I narrowly missed the chance to take another city. Meanwhile, we got nuked.
I mean we got nuked like 30 times over the 8 turns I played.
Poseidon was nice enough to build the Apollo Program while I was only building Wealth or troops, so we had a brief lead in the space race. But I soon realized that we were still missing way too many techs. Right before my retirement the Cyclopses started send troops to take nuked cities. I beat them back twice, but I couldn't see any point in continuing until they finished a 2nd spaceship.
, especially since in this BOTM there's no backdoor victory possible).
. Ironically, I lost several workers to barbarians late just because I got so used to the GW effects that I forgot to consider it only works on the continent it was built.
mission to the capital.
One tricky move was, since Zeus goes before Poseidon, I'd let him recapture the city and kill some of my stragglers while my army moved on to the next Poseidon city. I needed this war to end!
Right next to my capital.
(-5 happy on him, not me, for being a villain)
