Up to 1 AD, I had played a peaceful game expanding to 8 (+2 settlers) pretty weak cities. Sure, we had three gold mines and the GLH but that's about it. 2 of my cities were on SB's starting island so at least I was getting decent GLH-powered trade routes. I had also met all of the AI but with barb cities blocking, I was not able to get any TRs with them.
My game was somewhat similar to Smiregal's. Rather than fighting an early cat/treb war, I decided to go for cuirassiers for my first war. I reached Liberalism in 1050 AD (23 turns behind Smiregal) and Gunpowder in 1140 AD (22 turns behind ). My war with Pacal started in 1170 (11 turns behind) and ended in 1270 (4 turns ahead of Smiregal if his war lasted 25 turns since mine only lasted 10). Somehow, I made up ~27 turns from Liberalism to eliminating Pacal. That could be due to the huge army I had accumulated making my war a bit more efficient.
I already had 2 cities on SB's island so I decided to go for him next. However, I wanted to wait until I had learned Communism first so that I could eliminate colonial expenses before they got out of hand. This may have been a mistake because my army sat there for several turns. During this time, I expanded to the floodplains area NE of Pacal's starting area. This had gone undeveloped and was too good to pass up. I declared war on SB in 1340 AD and pushed him off the island by 1410 AD. He had 3 cities on the land mass to the east so I capped him rather than trying to finish him off completely.
By this time, the love fest between Darius, Hammy and Washington enabled them to start pulling away in tech. I wasn't ready to take any of them on yet so I went after to Sal with cuirassiers -> cavalry -> tanks in several stop-and-go wars. I suspect this is where I lost a lot of time. My war with Sal went from 1610 AD to 1780 AD (34 turns
). He was a much harder nut to crack than I expected even though he was quite a bit behind in tech. During the war, I also settled the northern island. Hammy got one city there before I could fill it up but it meant fewer cities for me to take later on.
As my war with Sal was coming to an end, I was setting up for a war against Washington and then three things happened. First, Washington peace vassaled to Darius. Second, Darius demanded 500 gold. He had been in WHEOOHRN for about 20 turns and I was worried he was plotting on my so I accepted. This produced a 10-turn peace treaty. Third, Darius starting cranking out the wonders and he was ~30 turns away from a Cultural victory. So I shifted my war efforts toward Darius and on the turn our peace treaty ended, I declared on him in 1800 AD. About 2 turns before the DoW, Washington broke free but I had already "wasted" quite a bit of production to defend my eastern front where Washington was within striking distance. This took away from my planned war front but I didn't want to get attacked from behind. Luckily, Darius did not bribe anyone into the war with me even though he could have (he had a tech lead on both Washington and Hammy). I used mainly tanks a few artillery and machine guns to defend captured cites. The artillery probably wasn't the best idea because they are way too slow and I only used them on a handful of cities because they were always behind the tanks. The war with Darius lasted until 1824 AD (12 turns) and I capped him with 2 cities that would have taken me too long to capture.
While the war with Darius was underway, I made it all the way to his southern borders and declared on Hammy to keep my tanks (and artillery rolling). The war started in 1818 AD and was still going strong until the end of the game. He still had 12 cities when domination was triggered.
On the turn I capped Darius, I DOW'd Washington. Darius still had one city buffering my conquered cities and Washington. Washington moved in and I took out his stack and captured his border city on the next turn. I also started the war front on the southern island. The war with Washington went pretty fast. It lasted from 1824 AD until the end of the game but he was down to 1 city when he vassaled to Hammy.
The war with Hammy was harder than I expected it would be. He had a large army and well defended cities. He also had a big navy that I had to deal with. Progress was a bit slow but I by this time, my Persian cities started to come out of revolt and I finally triggered domination in 1836 AD (9 turns after Smiregal).
Overall, it was a fun game. It has been a LONG time since I fought a modern-era war and I was a bit rusty. I wasn't sure which units to use and it was painful shuttling troops all over the map via transports. I think had I gone for tanks only and skipped artillery, I could have shaved off a couple of turns but likely not enough to beat Smiregal's 1818 domination victory.
I ended the game with 89 cities and 985 pops. My tank efficiency was pretty good. I built 153 and only lost 29. I'm guessing that some of the later-produced ones never saw any action though. Of the 56 artillery that I built, I only lost 15.
I wonder how early Bemep42 is going dominate. He is usually a few centuries ahead of any date I can manage.
Thanks for the fun game, kcd_swede!!
