BTS Roleplaying Challenge: Churchill

[Sleepless]

Beginning - End

Spoiler :

Right my first thought was how to play this. For 2 seconds I thought lets go for a space ship win but with the lack of research I then thought perhaps not.

Next thought I need to make it a little bit harder so I followed Olodunes restrictions except I could tech Col and Currency before turning off research. Didn't want to make it to hard.

Then I decided I have to vassalise all the AI before I could win. Obviously this needs Feudalism which I can't tech towards so waited a bit before Roo graciously (although he wasn't aware of it) gave it to me for a few EPs.

I did start off by building the GW only real source of early EPs first GS settled, second went to make SY then didn't see another one until near the end. I used the last GS to infiltrate Roo and effectively got Chem and Steel from this mission. It does show the power of GSpys as a Great Scientist would only bulb about half of Chem.

Anyway first to go was Biz. Obviously he had to go and ruin my victory plans as even down to his last city which was size 2 I had to be joking when asking him to capitulate. I tried to tell him I wasn't but he decided to go down fighting. Oh well, victory condition changed to vassalize all AIs who are left

Thankfully all the other AIs decided to be a bit more helpful and the relations screen ended up like this:

Biz wouldn't capitulate with his last city the last to go Roo had plenty left.

Ending up with this screen:

Winston's place in history:

Lastly thanks for posting this game I enjoyed playing it.

 

[Norvin_Green]

i'd like to thank cam h for the nice intro and challenging game.

Spoiler :

ok, here was my plan. i thought about the starting spot, the wine (happiness + hereditary rule), the ivory (more happiness) and being protective. i looked at the tech tree and when i saw that feudalism (enables vassalage and opens up longbows) was one tech after monarchy i figured why not try to get some well-trained lb's. since the path also went through priesthood i took a run at the oracle to get monarchy. i caught a break by popping writing from a hut, and then teched alpha, which allowed me to build research which accelerated getting to feudalism. the other thing that helped me early was the decision to settle 1s onto the wine. this plus the oasis was providing some decent commerce early on. my expansion after settling london went to the north. york was settled 1e of the gold and nottingham 1e of the northern horse. i am horrible at city selection sites but basically i wanted to split my opponents into west and east. after a little exploring i saw i had only pinned in roosevelt so he is currently in the process of being eliminated. i have some drill 4 lb's and my economy is hanging in there. i'm trying to tech towards banking to get some stock exchanges going in my commerce cities. i usually am competitive on monarch but my biggest fault is not finishing games. so i am going to continue to pound roosevelt until he is gone and then re-group and see which direction to turn. currently all religions have been founded (hinduism by stalin and buddhism by gandhi) but everyone is hindu except gandhi. i have not chosen to accept any religion at this time. because of the hindu bloc i think gandhi will be someone's vassal before long. he and degaulle are currently fighting. hopefully i will fight on and have more good news to report.

this is through turn 150 at normal speed

 

[mystyfly]

I played as well, thou not done yet (500AD).

Spoiler :

Well, pangaea and only industrious civs means war, of course
Before I played I surely wanted to use a Thief economy and thus built the GW. But I soon found out that the AI is teching horribly slow. I settled York before the GW which has a great location, grabbing gold, copper (axes + early commerce) as well as 1 flood plain and sheep (growth). After copper was hooked up I started building Axes.
After teching BW, I beelined the ABC so I could finally declare war.
There were so many juicy targets: The chinese with only horses, Biz with horses and soon copper, FDR with nothing at all yet. I picked QSH as I like to get the only protective civ out (apart from me), FDR wouldn't be the target anyway as I can't go any further there. So after taking Beijing and another city, Shanghai, jewish holy city, in the floodplains with marble and after some razing, the chinese were no more.
I was quite impressed how fast those wonders fell, early. But I still tried the oracle more as a joke in shanghai. after 1 chop and whipping, I got it in 275BC Of course I took MC, on the way to Machinery and maces.

I surely kept on warring, now with some swords and left Biz with only one tundra city. Next target was france. I only kept a couple of cities, the otheres were all razed. There was much space where india settled but I don't really care. Stalin DOWd Gandhi some decades ago but didn't manage to take a single city (but he really tried). The world's dominant religion is judaism and guess who owns the shrine .
I built too many cats or lost too many swords that I have to wait some more time until I can go after Stalin but the wars will surely go on (I have about 6 swords left and about 15 cats. Those cats were too slow to get suicided on lyons or paris).
None of the AI really techs at a pace that I could tech-trade (or steal). I've noticed I 'forgot' Feudalism for vassals (probabely because in my games, I turn off vassal states) to speed up conquest/dom. It's now 500 AD and NO AI researched CoL yet. After Feudalism, it will be CS of course.

Spoiler :

Tech situation:

 

[Refar]

Just a at Mystifly's game.

Spoiler :

Oracle at turn 104 normal speed with 4 IND AI in the game. From my own and Cam_H game i already was thinking, that the AI seem a bit slow on wonders... But that takes it to the next level...

 

[mystyfly]

@Refar:

Spoiler :

That's why I wrote that it was a bit of a joke... I just built something in Shanhai and saw that the oracle was still available and I thought why not? as I now had marble, one chop and the whip made it very quickly. QSH was probabely trying to build it, who knows, Stalin built the henge and another one on moscow, gandhi expanded faster than the other AIs, Biz STILL hasn't got Priesthood and FDR built the GLH.
The other wonders went very fast. My only idea is that many AIs neglecting the religious (wonder-unlocking) techs would be the main reason...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

@Refar:

Spoiler :

That's why I wrote that it was a bit of a joke... I just built something in Shanhai and saw that the oracle was still available and I thought why not? as I now had marble, one chop and the whip made it very quickly. QSH was probabely trying to build it, who knows, Stalin built the henge and another one on moscow, gandhi expanded faster than the other AIs, Biz STILL hasn't got Priesthood and FDR built the GLH.
The other wonders went very fast. My only idea is that many AIs neglecting the religious (wonder-unlocking) techs would be the main reason...

Spoiler :

I noticed it too, for a Monarch game the AI teched amazingly slowly on this map. Just like you, I did tons, and tons, and tons of damage before anybody got feudalism. Normally you'd expect some halfway decent tech trades on a pangaea, but maybe these guys didn't for some reason?

 

[Olodune]

More nice reports

@Sleepless

Spoiler :

Allowing self-research of CoL and Currency was a smart move On Emperor+ it's probably not such a big deal for an Espionage heavy economy, but for this map the research rate of the AIs -- especially of those crucial techs -- slowed my game down in the early ADs.

@Cam_H

Spoiler :

A nice break spotting that wheat I like my move 1N onto the ivory, but your capital is probably a little stronger -- and you leave the floodplain for a stone grabbing city. I'd be interested in seeing an Empire overview at sometime around 500BC->0AD

 

[Cam_H]

@ Olodune

Spoiler :

I'm still not sure whether it was the best move or not - it's certainly acted to weaken the Horse city to the south. London was surprisingly food-poor for a capital I felt, with so many Plains tiles, so on the face of it, it was a fortunate move.

Not touched my game this weekend due to RL commitments.

Thanks for your observation though.