Wars
I was hoping to pop The Wheel from a hut in order to spot horses, but it didn’t happen. I was not very concerned about this however, because I planned to attack the Arabs with swords anyway.
Arab War 825-730 BC
I chose the Arabs as my first target for three reasons: they were the quickest to reach, I didn’t want them to ever be able to build their Ansar Warriors, and I wanted to secure one frontier. I upgraded 10 warriors to swords in 950 BC and began marching toward Arabia in two stacks that included my swords, 4 spears and 2 cats. In 850 I decided to demand a city from Abu. I am not sure why I did it, I think I just felt like making him angry with me. I was shocked when he capitulated.
That was a first for me, and I assume it was due to the regent difficulty level, which I have never played. Regardless of the gift, I declared war on him the next turn. I took two cities, including Mecca, and then gave them peace in 730 for the city of Damascus. They had two small tundra towns remaining.
Babylonian War 490- 270 BC
I wasn’t able to get any cities from Babylon before declaring war, but he did give me all his gold (31g). I could really get used to these cowardly AIs.
I had a few more troops for this war, including some three-man chariots. I autorazed two of Ham’s cities and then took Babylon with a three-man chariot, launching my GA. Ham gave me three cities for peace, leaving him with two at the southern tip of the continent.
Sumerian War 110 BC - 360 AD
I had to do a lot of strategizing before starting this war. One issue I had to resolve was accessing some Sumerian towns: many were not reachable by three-man chariots. Another issue was the Sumerian’s wonder builds. I had invested quite a bit of money in this game to investigate wonder-building cities, and I knew that Sumeria was about 25 turns away from building The Lighthouse and the Temple of Artemis. The way things were going though, Portugal would beat them to both wonders.
I decided to attack Sumeria immediately in order to kick off their GA, which should allow them to beat the Portuguese to the wonders. There were a few problems with this plan: 1) my troops were not in position to do much damage to Sumeria, 2) Many of my three-man chariots were around inaccessible swamp cities and my swordsmen were elsewhere, and 3) The two wonder-building cities were the easiest ones for me to attack, but because I could not disturb their construction projects, I had to trek through their territory to reach cities I could annex immediately.
In short, this meant I was in for a long war. Thanks to my GA, however, I was able to avoid war weariness until 330 AD.
In 30 AD I captured Ur and got a great leader. Ur also had the Pyramids, so that was a very nice turn.
. The rest of my troops were circling around Sumerian territory and amassing for an attack. In 70 and 90 AD the TOA and Lighthouse were finished, and in 130 AD I captured them. I also rushed my FP in Sumer with my leader. So the “Capture Sumeria’s Wonders” plan worked beautifully. However, my tactical plan did not go quite so well. If I had planned correctly, the war would have been over about 160 years before 360 AD. The last two Sumerian cities were buried in the swamp, and I had to wait for my droves of slave workers to build roads through them so my chariots could attack.
Taking the TOA right after it was build made for a very interesting cultural explosion. The following graph is from 470 AD, long after I took the TOA, but it shows my rapid cultural growth. (Pardon the quality of the image. I am used to photoshop, but I am on a strange computer and it doesn't have it.)
When I began taking Sumerian cities in 110 BC, their culture was more than double mine, and I was quite preoccupied with culture flips. On the graph, you can see my slow culture rise from around 100 BC to 100 AD. This was due to the building of Libraries in many of my cities. The steep increase from 100 AD until around 300 AD was due to the capture of the Temple of Artemis. I watched Sumerian culture--which was more than double mine--drop to half my own in about ten turns! That was quite amazing. As a result, the cities I captured on my continent after 170 AD did not even have resisters. Nice.
Clean Up
I finished off the Babylonians in 470 AD, and the Arabs in 570. There was not much to note about these wars, as each civ only had a few spearmen. And those Arab spearmen just didn’t hold up well against my cavalry.
The Hollow Korean War 30-340 AD
This was just an empty conflict to slow the tech pace on the other continent. I had gifted Korea into the Middle ages a few turns before so that I could get their free tech. I didn’t want them trading those techs around, so I pulled the rest of the continent into an alliance against them. At the end of the war, they gave me a city for peace
, my first on the new continent.
Chinese War 590-660 AD
I had perfect staging areas for my attack on China: the city I received from Korea as a gift was on China’s west coast, and a city I founded (4 squares from Beijing) was on his east coast. I attacked from both fronts with around 20 cavalry, and average about 3 captures per turn. In 660 AD he gave me 3 cities for peace, and he had only his capitol remaining.
The True Korean War 680-730 AD
No peace treaties for Korea. I just killed them
Zulu War 730-760 AD
I took five cities on the first turn of this war, including Zimbabwe. At the end of the war, Shaka gave me three cities for peace, leaving him with two.
I only got two leaders this game, which was shocking given the number of elite victories I had (well over 75, maybe much more because I stopped keeping track). The second leader didn’t even count. He came one turn before the end of the game.
That was downright irritating!
I was rushing 3-5 temples a turn for the last several turns of the game, and in 770 AD I reached a domination victory.
Areas for Improvement
I spotted four mistakes I made this game, each of which could have led to a faster victory. If anyone else sees others though, please let me know!
1) I should have built more cities early. I fell into my old habit left over from Civ 2: a very sparse build that is almost OCP. For an early Domination victory, I wasted a lot of terrain.
2) I had a mental lapse after getting Literacy, and I wasted three turns researching Map Making before I realized I was supposed to be doing COL. This could have been disastrous, but thankfully it wasn’t.
3) I should have looked further ahead in my tactical assault on Sumeria. Getting my Chariots bogged down behind swamps slowed me down considerably.
4) I departed from my beeline toward Military Tradition twice, and both times it was a mistake. The first instance was to get Chivalry, which I thought would make my final conquest of the Arabs easier. Unfortunately, my Cavalry reached their cities at the same time my knights did, so I wasted four turns of research. The second mistake was to Research Theology, Education and Astronomy. I had turned off research after Military Tradition, but I turned it back on because I thought I would need Caravels to transport my large military to the new continent. As it turned out, I had transported all my units before I even finished my research on Astronomy. I never upgraded a single galley to a caravel. If I had not made this final research mistake, my domination would have been around 15 turns sooner, because I would have had the money to rush temples on the new continent immediately. This final mistake was very costly to me in the competition.
Final Thoughts
Overall I was quite pleased with my game, in spite of the mistakes I made. It was one of the best I have ever played. My goal was to break into the top 10, although I don’t know if this game will reach that goal or not. I did notice that--among the posters--only two people appear to have gotten a domination victory faster: Megalou and Darkness. That’s pretty good company to be in, so I’m
.
This second settler moved four times (back toward the river and Hattusus) and founded Tarsus in 3650 BC. Although the city would never surpass a surplus of two food, the plains were far preferable to the desert in which he appeared. I built three scouts and then a granary in Hattusus, and eventually it would become an 8-turn 4/6 warrior/settler factory. After cranking out a few warriors in Tarsus, I built a granary there as well.
I didn’t even know that was possible with a non-religious civ. From that point on my expansion picked up its pace.
