Finished a game as France on Immortal, aggressive tourism victory on turn 230, would have been faster, but you apparently need to adopt an ideology before you're allowed to win the game.
I spent most of the game in war with 3 people, the techleader(carthage) who kept building tragic coastal-cities next to my core-cities, my neighbor to the north (arabia) and my neighbor to the east (montezuma). This was was pretty much a stalemate, the Arabian lands were horrible so I didn't want to waste my time attacking him, but Montezuma had heavy terrain-advantage over me, loads of jungle and forest with no real way to park my trebuchets. I was also suffering heavily from strategic resource shortage, I had 2 horses(one which I accidentally traded away right before the war started) and 2 iron (mostly because I forgot to buy the 6 iron tile next to my third city).
Montezuma eventually started offering me white peace, but since I wanted his land and not Arabia's I kept refusing, waiting for Arabia to offer a deal instead. Carthage also refused to offer me any peace-deals but on that front I could hold the line with just a few crossbows and landschneckt.
The Arabians and the Aztecs were both attacking the same city by the way, and they ended up declaring war on each-other while still at war with me, this east-front conflict is probably the bloodiest war I've ever seen in civ, I was producing units in every city and spambuying landschneckts but my army never numbered more than 10 units. Units just kept dying on top of each-other, I probably killed twice the number of units I lost but it just didn't change anything.
What finally did tip the scales was when I finally got to gunpowder and started throwing my gold at upgrading units to musketeers rather than buying landschneckts, it was a really slow process, as I wasn't able to run any caravans (all city-states in the neighborhood were at war with me as well), but the Muskteers unlike the pikes, longswords and landschneckts before them didn't actually die. They cut units down, healing from the authority policy then killing another, until they were ready to retreat, which they could easily do with their lightning warfare promotion. With the musketeers and cannons I managed to lay waste to the majority of the Arabian army including all of their camels which lead them to sign a peace-treaty where I got a bunch of gold which I used to upgrade more cannons. The growing army of not-dying musketeers on the east front meant that newly produced units didn't necessarily have to rush over there, which gave me a numbers advantage on the western front versus Carthage and allowed me to sack and burn their crappy coastal city, making resupplying a lot harder for them.
With my musketeers, my cannons(still stuck on 2 iron however) and about 4 great generals turned citadels I managed to bust down the Aztec border-city, and with the help of their road-network and their workers having removed most of the jungle in there I could keep my army rolling all the way to their capital, which I broke a few turns later. I also managed to recapture a really badly located city that I had settled in the middle of montys territory right before the war and which I was unable to defend during the war. Being down to 3 coastal cites with surprisingly little in-land territory Monty finally capitulated to me and became my vassal.
After this I used all the gold I got from my peace-deals and conquests to buy workers (think I ended up with around 20 of them for my 9 cities) to finally try and repair my battle-torn empire. Before this rebuilding-effort started I bet I actually had more pillaged than non-pillaged tiles in the empire, although a majority of them was around the recently conquered Aztec cities. At this point I was still at war with Carthage, who repeatedly tried to resettle their coastal city that I burned down earlier, she did occasionally send a larger forces across the ocean but this was not very much of a war, more like cleanup.
With Carthage still refusing to negotiate, Arabia decides that this was the time to strike, and launched a sneakattack towards my capital, but with my extremely experienced army left from the Aztec war and with production restored to my empire in the form of infrastructure from the rebuilding-period he couldn't scratch me. He had gunpowder units as well at this point, but I had level 9+musketeers and equally experienced cannons(a lot more than 2 at this point), so his army was scattered and destroyed within turns. I ran over his cities, collecting stolen art and culture-boosts, as well as a bunch of yields from Imperium+Hero Worship+Crusader Spirit, this caused me to finish out aesthetics as well as most of Industry. Also worth mentioning that Carthage agreed to a peace-deal as soon as Arabia attacked me which allowed me to start piling up trade-routes on her cities (at this point it was only her and Arabia that actually had a big enough culture-pool to be an issue).
I realized that it would take forever to managed to topple Arabia's sizable culture-pool (Carthage had a bigger one, but they also had a ton of cities so my tourism towards them was a lot higher), so I decided to just eliminate him from the game, burning all his cities to the ground.
Around this time I hit the Industrial era, giving me the ability to purchase my first great musician (I had pretty much been forced to completely neglect guilds in all cities for most of the game thanks to the endless war) and another one 5 turns later. At this point I had been in a golden age for like 50 turns thanks to GAP from city-conquest, Taj mahal, the Aesthetics finisher and an artist from Uffizi, and I had been in double culture for almost the same time from my conquests of the Aztec and then Arabian cities (also liberated a city-state along the way), so these Musicians were powerful and both of them together brought my tourism above the Carthage culturepool.
At this point I sat quietly and waited, picking off spawning Partisans from the burning former Arabian cities until I finally got the Industry finisher, which allowed me to adopt Autocracy and win the game.
I spent most of the game in war with 3 people, the techleader(carthage) who kept building tragic coastal-cities next to my core-cities, my neighbor to the north (arabia) and my neighbor to the east (montezuma). This was was pretty much a stalemate, the Arabian lands were horrible so I didn't want to waste my time attacking him, but Montezuma had heavy terrain-advantage over me, loads of jungle and forest with no real way to park my trebuchets. I was also suffering heavily from strategic resource shortage, I had 2 horses(one which I accidentally traded away right before the war started) and 2 iron (mostly because I forgot to buy the 6 iron tile next to my third city).
Montezuma eventually started offering me white peace, but since I wanted his land and not Arabia's I kept refusing, waiting for Arabia to offer a deal instead. Carthage also refused to offer me any peace-deals but on that front I could hold the line with just a few crossbows and landschneckt.
The Arabians and the Aztecs were both attacking the same city by the way, and they ended up declaring war on each-other while still at war with me, this east-front conflict is probably the bloodiest war I've ever seen in civ, I was producing units in every city and spambuying landschneckts but my army never numbered more than 10 units. Units just kept dying on top of each-other, I probably killed twice the number of units I lost but it just didn't change anything.
What finally did tip the scales was when I finally got to gunpowder and started throwing my gold at upgrading units to musketeers rather than buying landschneckts, it was a really slow process, as I wasn't able to run any caravans (all city-states in the neighborhood were at war with me as well), but the Muskteers unlike the pikes, longswords and landschneckts before them didn't actually die. They cut units down, healing from the authority policy then killing another, until they were ready to retreat, which they could easily do with their lightning warfare promotion. With the musketeers and cannons I managed to lay waste to the majority of the Arabian army including all of their camels which lead them to sign a peace-treaty where I got a bunch of gold which I used to upgrade more cannons. The growing army of not-dying musketeers on the east front meant that newly produced units didn't necessarily have to rush over there, which gave me a numbers advantage on the western front versus Carthage and allowed me to sack and burn their crappy coastal city, making resupplying a lot harder for them.
With my musketeers, my cannons(still stuck on 2 iron however) and about 4 great generals turned citadels I managed to bust down the Aztec border-city, and with the help of their road-network and their workers having removed most of the jungle in there I could keep my army rolling all the way to their capital, which I broke a few turns later. I also managed to recapture a really badly located city that I had settled in the middle of montys territory right before the war and which I was unable to defend during the war. Being down to 3 coastal cites with surprisingly little in-land territory Monty finally capitulated to me and became my vassal.
After this I used all the gold I got from my peace-deals and conquests to buy workers (think I ended up with around 20 of them for my 9 cities) to finally try and repair my battle-torn empire. Before this rebuilding-effort started I bet I actually had more pillaged than non-pillaged tiles in the empire, although a majority of them was around the recently conquered Aztec cities. At this point I was still at war with Carthage, who repeatedly tried to resettle their coastal city that I burned down earlier, she did occasionally send a larger forces across the ocean but this was not very much of a war, more like cleanup.
With Carthage still refusing to negotiate, Arabia decides that this was the time to strike, and launched a sneakattack towards my capital, but with my extremely experienced army left from the Aztec war and with production restored to my empire in the form of infrastructure from the rebuilding-period he couldn't scratch me. He had gunpowder units as well at this point, but I had level 9+musketeers and equally experienced cannons(a lot more than 2 at this point), so his army was scattered and destroyed within turns. I ran over his cities, collecting stolen art and culture-boosts, as well as a bunch of yields from Imperium+Hero Worship+Crusader Spirit, this caused me to finish out aesthetics as well as most of Industry. Also worth mentioning that Carthage agreed to a peace-deal as soon as Arabia attacked me which allowed me to start piling up trade-routes on her cities (at this point it was only her and Arabia that actually had a big enough culture-pool to be an issue).
I realized that it would take forever to managed to topple Arabia's sizable culture-pool (Carthage had a bigger one, but they also had a ton of cities so my tourism towards them was a lot higher), so I decided to just eliminate him from the game, burning all his cities to the ground.
Around this time I hit the Industrial era, giving me the ability to purchase my first great musician (I had pretty much been forced to completely neglect guilds in all cities for most of the game thanks to the endless war) and another one 5 turns later. At this point I had been in a golden age for like 50 turns thanks to GAP from city-conquest, Taj mahal, the Aesthetics finisher and an artist from Uffizi, and I had been in double culture for almost the same time from my conquests of the Aztec and then Arabian cities (also liberated a city-state along the way), so these Musicians were powerful and both of them together brought my tourism above the Carthage culturepool.
At this point I sat quietly and waited, picking off spawning Partisans from the burning former Arabian cities until I finally got the Industry finisher, which allowed me to adopt Autocracy and win the game.
. Good times.
