Thanks for hosting the game. Was a fun map. Don't think I've ever played tectonic before but if this map was representative then I might start giving it a go. Could lead to more unbalanced games but a lot of fun figuring out what's going on.
I ended with...
Spoiler:
900AD Conquest.
HAs for Cyrus, Hannibal, Qin and Ramesses. Transitioned into Catapults, Elephants, Maces and a couple of Knights for the rest.
Realised I was going to need Astro just about early enough to not destroy the final date too much. Although too late for any bulbing strats. So GPs went on a couple of 12-turn GAs at the end.
Forgot to make a 1AD save so just have screenshots for a bit before (75 BC) and the end.
SpoilerScreenshots :
Edit: Not sure why screenshots are missing the right hand side of the screen.... apologies!
I went for ye olde culturation victory, the results of which netted me a not-so-impressive game. This map seemed kinda small and the same thing almost happened that did happen in my last game, I tripped domination before culture. In this game, I had to gift away just enough cities to keep that from happening. Not so fast culture with not very impressive score, but I had fun.
As mentioned in the first spoiler, I gave Cyrus no peace and then took his stuff with Qin's help. I focused on things culture but also science and an early golden age for an MT bulbarooskie, cause as cultured as I am I like to kill the thangs (but only in the imaginary gaming lands). I pumped out a sufficient army of curs - not super fast or a lot of whipping, just the queue flip trick and I had an HE city in Palp on the marble. After the first levy, fewer cities built units rather than focused on my cultural interests, while mainly Palp did its thing.
I took out all of Carthage, which was quite small. It was actually very fast and I was surprisingly lucky. I think I lost two units that whole war. Most of his cities were so close that I could immediately move into position for the next.
Next, I turned my sights on my long-time friends Qin and Rammbo. Qin was obviously tougher - I think he was the biggest city/land-wise besides me. But his first few cities near me went down fast including that last Persia city he took. I then had to regroup a bit as he finally got a reasonable stack up to challenge. That stack went down quite fast to my curs, but I did encounter some losses as he was standing on a forest and there were some pikes. At this point he was ready to bend the knee, but I wanted Beijing and Shang. My woody super medic mace quickly healed the calvary and I marched on Shang which had Chicken and took it out - he was massing up in Beijing so I surprised him there. I took Beijing next and vassalized him with 3 cities. This is when I started to notice that things were getting a bit dicey with the land.
Regardless, I went after Ram. I took 3 cities really quick and then the 4th was the prize - the coveted Mauso that he beat me to much earlier. He had to pay for that. I then made a stupid move that I did not realize until a few turns later. Instead of making him a vassal I must of clicked some kind of peace deal. But at least I got Mauso in time for my run on golden ages. After ten turns, I did vasalize him, but had to start give back cities. Eventually, I gave back the Mauso city too as I had to but had to, but at that point the game was decided and no more golden ages would occur.
I had to give Qin a couple of old Carthage cities too to keep away from dom. He would not take back his old cities at this point for some reason - probably as I had too much culture in them.
The fact that I am about to finish Artillery kinda shows that lack of optimal culture, although I had been in culture mode for a long time as I was far ahead tech-wise, and with decent tech vassals, I traded for a lot of techs. Plus, with Rep and all the specialists I was running my science was not bad. Pericles and Gilgs were friendly too, so made some trades with them too.
My biggest mistake was that Persopolis should have been one of my legendary cities - it was perfect for it. Instead, I used cities that I was gonna have to bomb a lot.
After 1AD I headed for guilds and finally declared on Cyrus in 740AD. I proceeded to eliminate him completely and Hannibal wisely offered to be my peace vassal just after Cyrus' elimination so I could go straight to China. Persepolis had the Pyramids which was a nice bonus. I libbed MT just before attacking China who folded pretty quickly. I then proceeded to attack Egypt and after Ram lost 5 cities including Thebes he also kissed the ring. After that Gilga also folded rather quickly after losing just 2 cities and with that and some new settlements in our north eastern wastelands I got a 13th century domination victory.
1420 Dom win. Nothing much exciting to report, although I didn't need to bother invading Greece or teching Astronomy.
Does anybody else feel like Hannibal is (nearly) always a threat, in terms of both teching and military? Here he was hobbled because of being bottled up on a peninsula, but even so his teching was way ahead of just about everybody.
Religion played a decisive role in my game.
Ramesses founded and adopted Judaism. He was diligent spreading the word to Qin, who ended up building the AP in 250AD, and to us, who finally saw the light and converted to it in in this same year. Ramesses was elected AP resident, with our support. Cyrus and Gilga were voting members.
Meanwhile, Hannibal founded Confu and spread it to Cyrus, while Gilga had founded and adopted Hinduism.
After the peaceful BC years, we attacked Cyrus in 450AD. As expected, he brought his friend Hannibal to the war in the same turn.
What they didn't expect was that 3 turns later the AP passed a resolution to declare war on the infidels. In this case, Hannibal was the "infidel", and suddenly found himself at war with the rest of the world, including his own buddy Cyrus.
That way the war went much easier than we were expecting, and both Cyrus and Hanni were dead by 1070AD, and all their cities were now Indian, with exception of a single carthaginian one, taken by Ramesses.
While fighting, we were focusing on closing the tech gap between us and the the tech leaders, planning for a space race game. By the 1200's we had a comfortable lead in all aspects of the game, were the AP residents and were 3x the size of our friends (Biology since 1130AD).
But then we realized we could finish the game much earlier taking the cheesy AP route. We just needed to adopt Ramesses fav civic OR to get his votes, and spread the religion to one of the Greek cities, which we did while growing pop. Ended with a 1270AD AP win, with some 270k score - not impressive, but possibly my highest scoring GOTM since I resumed playing a few years ago.
Well done, C63! The world war against Hannibal is hilarious. Rameses spread Judaism everywhere and built the AP in my game. So I found myself doing backflips to mansge wars between votes although one time I forgot to cease fire and got stalled 10 years. In this game I used the religious trait of free civic and religion changes far more than ever before. Even down to running serfdom when emancipation took hold so I could revolt Rameses with a spy to screw up his happiness.
I had significant problems with barbarians early on, but managed to settle peacefully enough land to attain another mediocre space victory. There were multiple places throughout history where I could have easily done a military victory, but none before about 1000AD and I decided that the minimum IRL effort to finish up the game was to go for space. Emperor level is always touch and go for me, so I played more conservatively than I would on a lower level. Still, it was quite a challenge. I think the only thing I did better than I usually do was in the diplomatic arena - I was able to keep rivals busy elsewhere and was nice to my friends. I think I could play this one 5 times and win it 5 different ways... but would be challenged in all of them.
I settled about 10 cities before Persia attacked in medieval, but fended him off with the help of the AP. Then went for cuirassiers to conquer Cyrus and Hannibal. Big Ramesses was a problem with both Gilgamesh and Qin vassalized (Qin through peace) but they delayed Rifling for about 50 turns to get Sci Meth and Military Science so I Cav rushed Qin but got a bit cocky and lost most of the army at Heliopolis, so had to delay to artillery to take him out and clean up the continent for a 1765 Dom victory. Didn't help that Ramesses had big stacks from subjugating the Sumerians and Statue of Zeus in Memphis racking up 13 war weariness...
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Ramesses was elected AP resident, with our support. Cyrus and Gilga were voting members.
