Challenger save
I roleplayed a little on this one, given the theme and real-world (ish) map. I wanted complete control of Great Britain - and probably Ireland too.
The early game saw peaceful expansion to 12 cities, including the Isle of Wight and both premade Barbarian cities. I got the Great Lighthouse but narrowly missed the Oracle.
Scotland built the Pyramids so he was my first target - in 200AD with Classical/Medieval units, finishing the war with the capture of the Shetland Isles to the northeast in 1000AD.
Wales was next, with Cuirassiers and Cavalry - from 1080AD to 1380AD.
By this time, everyone generally caught up in tech, and had Rifling in particular.
My goal was to tech up again, and generally outproduce everyone.
With the scarcity of luxury resources, but abundance of mining resources, this pointed me towards a one-corporation play with just Mining Inc (1605 - as soon as I finally popped the GE).
Building all the radio wonders also helped - cities could generally get to size 12-13 after Emancipation unhappiness.
While I was doing this, Hengist (Saxony/Germany) absorbed and then vassaled William (500AD), Harald (1180AD) and Canute (1520AD) to wind up on 23 cities. Brian Boru also took Morgan le Fay as a vassal.
This all meant that I couldn't be sure of winning the space race - especially since the small city size would dampen tech rate significantly when building anything (e.g. space parts!)
Instead, I would use my production advantage, and conquer the world!
Brian Boru declared war on me in 1720, after I had started building an invasion fleet.
No AI can cope with marines, jet fighters, battleships and carriers in sufficient numbers - I decided to annex all of Ireland and the Faroes for the Mining and luxury resources - this was complete by 1795, at which point they all sailed back home to Dover for the big showdown.
(Note - a cheesy Diplo victory was available at this point, by leaving Morgan le Fay in control of the UN-city so she'd be my opponent... but that's no fun!)
By 1814, we had rough parity in power rating, and my 370-unit flotilla set sail. Well, technically not all of it - some of the land units stayed behind due to lack of transport capacity and would be ferried over later.
Two large fleets were ambushed in their harbours, Oil was disconnected, and every single defending fighter was shot down on the first turn of war. From there it was just a case of draining him of excess units, and then pummelling everything from above (including a spaceship - launched 1822, aborted 1830).
The last AI capitulated in 1838 for an 1840 Conquest Victory.
Stats:
Thoughts on the map:
- The thematic map was a fun way to go. Cornwall felt a million miles away which was very true to life!
- The barb cities were briefly fun, and then behaved like every other barb city.
- The low number of happiness resources was an interesting challenge - if you wanted them you had to explore and conquer them because nobody had duplicates!
- There were loads of Mining inc resources.
- It was a very land-heavy map - and my mouse-hand certainly appreciates why people use nukes instead of air-power to fight these modern age wars!
- The mixed-up place names were funny. Why couldn't they anticipate this and teach the AIs geography when they made the game?