Continued from a previous post.
The End Game Plan
Date: March 4. I had just completed taking Spice Island from the Greeks to secure my sixth source of luxuries. I was ahead of all AI's in all the important categories: land size, production, technology, and population. Furthermore, it seems chiefpaco, SirPleb and Aeson have finally cracked how the domination victory threshold is calculated.
With 4 weeks to complete the game and the game essentially won, it looked like a milk run is in order.
My strategy for maximizing score was as follows:
- Take the maximum territory allowed without triggering domination. At this point, I held about 25% of all land and coastal tiles.
- Maximize population. This means the priority tiles are food producing tiles regardless of their distance from the capital. Production and gold are only required for building an infrastructure and keeping the AI's in line. All military requirements can be met from the core cities and any improvements in new cities can be bought.
- Maximize happiness. There are several ways to do this. Taking the last two luxuries is the most obvious as they are worth 4 happy faces per city each with a market place. Another way to do this is to place cities close together, keeping their working population sizes small. Small cities can be kept happy on luxuries alone or with a few cheap improvements. They also grow quicker. A town with an aqueduct and marketplace can grow to size 12 with up to 11 happy working citizens (2 born content + 20 happy faces from lux = 11 happy citizens).
My plan for accomplishing this was as follows:
- Settle all high food areas. Currently, there is a large high food area south of my Greek holdings which are empty (thanks to the Japanese) and could be quickly settled. All new towns in high corruption areas will be crowded closely to minimize the required improvements. The aim of this approach being minimizing the number of required city improvements and keeping the city sizes to 12 or less.
- Build or dedicate some towns to exclusively producing settlers. These will be used to quickly settle or resettle high food areas..
- Remove Egyptians from Egypt to claim last two luxuries.
- Decimate remaining AI opponents. This will greatly simplify populating all of the high food areas. It will also allow me better control of my borders as culture-producing improvements can be skipped or removed to prevent border expansions.
- When nearing the domination threshold, fine-tune the ground utilization of the core cities. This might include disbanding cities in areas that cannot be fully utilized or removing cultural improvements to prevent border expansions.
Thus far in the game, I have one minor diplomatic black mark from the ancient era and only the Russians know about it. This plan will certainly call for a number of diplomatic transgressions and depending on my form of government, this may have negative consequences. My choice was to stay as a republic and possibly change to democracy after the military phase if the extra cash is required. My reasoning was as follows:
- This is my current form of government (no anarchy to get there), and I have the Universal Suffrage wonder. By taking out one AI opponent at a time and keeping the battles as short as possible, war weariness should be minimized. Production, gold and research are also adequate for the military phase.
- Democracy was ruled out as it may fall into anarchy during the military phase. The extra production, gold and faster research would be helpful but not essential.
- Communism was ruled out as the only form of rushing is population rushing. This contradicts my objectives of maximizing population and happiness.
- Monarchy was ruled out as this is an inferior form of government to republic. The no war weariness attribute is appealing but going into anarchy to get there and the reduced production, gold and research are too high a cost.
The Milk Run
With the plan laid out, I switched three lower production cities to producing settlers. The first few settlers were used to build towns near the forbidden palace and a granary was rushed in each of them. These towns were also used to produce settlers as needed.
In no time I was producing 1 or 2 settlers per turn and founding the same number of towns. The former Greek territory filled up quickly even with the tight city spacing I was using.
My current military objective was Egypt. I was researching towards electronics with the goal of building the Hoover Dam, triggering a golden age and flooding the Egyptians with cavalry. However, while I was settling the former Greek territory, I noticed the Egyptians had discovered replaceable parts. Cavalry against infantry! This could get very ugly.
I sent two galleons down the east and west coasts of Egypt carrying 2 riflemen, 1 cannon and a cavalry each. My thought was once I discovered replaceable parts (I would get it with the completion of The Theory of Evolution wonder), rubber would be revealed and I could rush in and cut off their rubber supply then follow it up with a large invasion.
Fortunately, I realized the folly of this plan before starting a war with the Egyptians. If lucky the rubber would appear within quick range of my galleons and in the open. The landing party could then cut the supply but would likely end up fodder under the Egyptian cavalries hooves. The Egyptians had lots of ironclads so reinforcements would be difficult. Not only that, I was still two techs from electronics and the Hoover Dam.
On the other hand, I had easy access to what was left of Russian land and they had not discovered replaceable parts. If I attacked the Russians, I would at least keep up my expansion momentum. The Egyptians would have to wait until tanks. As it turned out, they had two rubber supplies, one of them under a city.
I declared war on the Russians (2nd black mark in the game) and immediately captured two large Russian cities. The next turn, I attempted to take a small town on a hill and lost my army and several cavalries without taking the town. Perhaps they sensed I was going to raze the town.
The Russian attack stalemated at this point so I switched tactics. All available cannons were upgraded to artillery and three cities were dedicated to producing artillery. I also sent in some settler/infantry pairs to start the resettlement process. No need to wait for their towns to be removed.
This tactic broke the stalemate. After several artillery barrages, that hilltop town fell and was razed by my cavalry. After taking a few more towns with the artillery/cavalry combination the Russian defenses were quite weak. Many towns were taken with cavalry alone.
I had the Russians down to 1 tundra town near their starting position and 4 more towns at random points on the map. Since I had captured some towns and didn't want to risk culture flipping, the Russians had to be wiped out.
I negotiated a peace treaty, getting their 4 remote towns in the negotiations. I them promptly destroyed their last town. Another diplomatic black mark, but there was little the Japanese or Egyptians could do to me by this point anyway.
With the Russians gone, I considered an Egyptian invasion again. The Hoover Dam and the start of my golden age were only 2 turns away. Although I was still four techs or about 30 turns away from producing tanks, the artillery/cavalry combination worked well on the tough Russian cities and I reasoned they could have similar success against the Egyptians.
The closest point to the Egyptians was a town on the west coast of the former Greek land. Galleons could travell from there to Egypt in one turn. I could have 4 galleons and a couple of ironclads at the rally point within a few turns giving me an invasion force of 16 units with reinforcements arriving every two turns.
The Egyptian invasion was similar to the Greek invasion but slower. I built a town at the landing point and rushed some improvements. All Egyptian cities on the island were razed and the choice locations resettled. The biggest difference from the Greek invasion was artillery were used to soften up the cities, pounding all defenders to 1 hp before the cavalry moved in. There were some cavalry lost to 1 hp infantry and a mild Egyptian counterattack, but casualties were light.
While the Egyptian invasion was under way, I engaged the Japanese in a different kind of war; a cultural war. The Japanese had 3 isolated towns in the former Greek territory that were located on good ground. Temples and libraries were rushed in the surrounding towns with the goal of culturally assimilating those towns. My culture was approximately double the Japanese so their was a fair chance these towns could be assimilated while engaged with the Egyptians.
During the battle with the Egyptians, another great leader emerged. I decided to take a risk and used this leader to move my palace to the middle of the former Greek land. My reasoning was as follows:
- This would speed up development of the new towns in the Greek land. Even though I only needed to buy a couple of improvements per town, there were allot of new towns and the war effort also required gold.
- This would give a boost to the cultural war with Japan as the towns I want from them would be much closer to my capital.
This strategy did have risks however. All towns near Washington would have poor or no production and the towns near the new capital may not be able to contribute much before the end of the game.
Shortly after relocating my palace I was caught attempting to plant a spy in Japan. Japan declared war while I was still evicting the Egyptians from their home island giving me a two front war.
By this point, I was so far ahead of the Egyptians and Japanese that it didn't prove to be much of a problem. The momentum lost on the Egyptian front was more than made up for on the Japanese front.
It's difficult to tell if a late game palace move was beneficial. The location was certainly better, but the cities around the palace were not able to help much until well after the wars were complete. The added gold they provided did help in rushing improvements late in the game.
The remainder of the game consisted of fine tuning my empire. All cities were groomed for maximum population and happiness and border expansion was stopped just under the domination threshold. Three opponents were left at the end, the Egyptians, Japanese and Greeks and all were located in areas consisting of tundra, hills and mountains.
By the time my empire was groomed to its maximum potential, all but 1 or 2 working citizens were happy and nearly every tile in my territory was being worked. This was done with luxuries set at 0%. Most towns had a maximum population of 12 or less and all towns had marketplaces. According to SirPleb's score calculator, my internal score was over 17,000 at one point. As per the rules, I won't say what my final score was but it should be at least in the top 10 this month.
The Final Bit of Cheese
The only decision left in this game was the victory condition. Since the game was milked until 2050, there is no difference point-wise for any victory condition.
When making this decision, all victory types were still possible although diplomatic victory would be difficult.
Awards are given for the highest score for each victory condition. After looking at the high scores, I noticed that the award for highest score by retirement in 2050 is always the lowest of the high scores. Blinded by lust for an award of any kind, I decide to finish my game with a histographic victory.
Side Notes
Being expansionist this month did not prove to be much of an advantage. I only got one goody hut and it was empty. I think the Russians got all the rest on our starting island as they had way more technology than me when I first met them.
At one point early in the game in the Japanese and Russians were at war. The Japanese had two miserable towns on the north eastern coast of our home island and the Russians were located west of the former Moscow. The Japanese would send one or two lonely archers marching 20 to 30 tiles through forest, over mountains and across a desert in futile attempts at attacking the Russians.
When taking Spice Island, I noticed one of the cities had access to coal and iron. I thought Iron Works may be possible but by the time I built a town there and expanded my borders, the coal had vanished. Iron works was available later in a city near the former Greek capital but by that time it wasn't needed.
Despite this obviously cheesy attempt at getting an award, I am looking forward to the new award system next month. Fastest finish for some victory types should allow for more diversity in play styles. All we need now is a scoring system to match and these new awards should provide us with the raw data to develop one.
Milking a game requires skill and even more patience. You need to expand your territory and population as fast as possible while at the same time keeping as many citizens as possible happy. It took me until March 4 to get to the point where I felt the game was won and it then took me until March 26 to complete the game.
Egypt came in on my side, under the MPP.
So, every bomber and artillety unit in America moved to defend Paris and Boston, damaging Catherine's forces and making them go home for repairs before they could attack. A trickle of tanks were let through to die in attacks on my mech inf & artillery defended metropolises (esp Boston, which was on a hill). F-15s gradually took out Catherine's air force. With a few bombers and a cavalry, I destroyed the Russian city of Orleans (which had been defended only by an infantry), and that helpfully removed Russia's uranium supply. I built two or 3 nukes (2 tactical, 1 ICBM) but didn't use them. Eventually, Russia agreed a peace without tribute. 
