COTM87 - Final Spoiler

civ_steve

Deity
GOTM Staff
Retired Moderator
Joined
Mar 25, 2002
Messages
3,866
Location
formerly Santa Clarita, California

COTM 87 Final Spoiler; Aztecs, Game Submitted




Reading Requirements:
You may only read this thread if:
  1. You have completed and submitted your game.


Posting Restrictions:
  1. None! As long as its related to the GOTM, and within the forum rules!
  2. And ... Absolutely NO discussion of any other active 'X'OTM contest!

The game is over. Were your Aztecs militaristic or did you persue a different path to victory? All phases of the game are open territory.
 
Open
Domination in 1465 AD
Firaxis score: 5330
Jason score: 7447

Looks like I'll be a strong contender for a low award. :p

I decided to go the militaristic route from the beginning. I knocked out the Maya fairly easily and had firm control of the narrow pass. I decided that the next best target was the Inca rather that the Iroquois (the Iroquois front was much wider and they already had a good number of AC). Unfortunately, declaring on the Inca ended up triggering an early world war with forced me on the defensive for a time and slowed me down considerably. When the dust settled, the Inca were gone (I had captured most of their cities with 1 or 2 falling to Portugal), Spain had lost a good amount of territory to its neighbors, and the Iroquois core was a mess. Both England and the Dutch had captured random Iroquois cities before declaring peace.

Since the Iroquois were gassed, I decided to finish them off next. I took two of their remaining cities before the Netherlands declared, wiped out my offensive force with the offensive force left over from their Iroquois conquests, and threw me on the defensive. I eventually recovered, took all the Iroquois cities that the Dutch had captured, and destroyed the Iroquois. Portugal also wiped out Spain around this time.

Now, there were only three English cities sitting in "my" territory. They were the obvious next target but England had a mutual protection pact with Portugal. I didn't want to wait for the pact to expire so I declared, attacked the 3 cities, and hoped that my defense at the passes would be strong enough to hold until I could redirect my main force there.

I lost three cities north of the narrow pass but stopped the English and Portuguese forces and inflicted a decent number of casualties. I also took the 3 English cities in my territory with minimal casualties. It was slow going but I managed to make peace with Portugal, recapture/resettle my three cities north of the pass and take down three additional English cities. With their capital in my sights, the English pulled Portugal back into the fight. So, I decided to make peace with England and throw everything at Portugal.

Although Portugal was weaker than England, I expected it would still be slow going. However, once I knocked out their saltpeter, they didn't put up much of a fight. In fact, I was capturing their cities so quickly that I could barely produce enough settlers to keep up. Once Portugal was gone, I was very close to the domination limit. England was at war with the Netherlands but that didn't stopped the English from moving troops into my territory. These troops didn't really pose a threat and Netherlands seemed like an easier target so I declared on the Dutch and was soon over the dom limit.

Overall, it turned out to be a very fun game even though I was pressed for time and most things didn't go according to plan.
 
This was not my game... :sad:

Even though the start position looked quite strong with the two cows, it was not so good because of the lack of rivers, the cramped position and long unusable stretches of mountains. The lack of income showed dearly early on, and I lost the Philosophy-race to the Incas in 1425 BC (still had 4-5 turns to go at that time).

Missing the slingshot of course ruined the game, and I was about to abandon it, but as I had Christmas vacation and no other games going on, I trod on anyway...

After missing Philosophy, I first did Literature (and a few library prebuilds), before tackling the expensive Republic. Not sure, whether that was smart. But on the outset of this game I had planned to go for Cavalry anyway, so I thought the sooner I get the libs, the better, and it would probably not delay Republic more than 2-3 anyway (the libraries should be able to recover some of the lost ground).

After Republic (which I finished in 730 BC), I upgraded all my MP warriors to swordsmen and started the first campaign against the Incas and then the Mayans, who had finished the Pyramids by then. I also started to build horses, and once I got to Invention, I traded that for Chivalry, so I could already do some damage while waiting for the Cavalry... :D

Some people apparently re-located their core, but with all the libraries I had built, I didn't want to do that, so I stayed with my original capital for the entire game, probably another reason for my slow finish.

In 150 BC I triggered the GA, which helped finishing the FP in the city W of the sugar tile. (Having an FP city of size 8 probably wasn't a good idea either... But it made 20spt during GA, so quite ok.) The capital meanwhile used Sun Tzu's as a prebuild for Leonardo's. In 70 BC Invention was finished, and Leonardo's went online in 210 AD.

I hadn't made much progress against the Mayans during that time, but with Leonardo's I quickly upgraded 15 horsemen to Knights and finally took Chichen Itza with the Pyramids in 300 AD.

Military Tradition was finished in 420 AD, and from then on I used the money first for upgrades and then for cash-rushing Armies. In the end I had 11 Armies in the field, despite loosing three Armies in two flips :mad:
Both flips happened to the Iroquois, who had no culture to speak of (thanks to my many libraries, my culture was quite ok - only the Spaniards, who had built Artemis early on, and the Mayans had a better culture than me.) And both flips happened on the second turn after taking the city! I know the first turn is save, and I left the Armies in there (together with a bunch of red-lined Cavs and elite Knights...) a second turn for healing completely...

In 590 AD I captured Madrid with the Artemis Temple in a surprise attack and was able to hold it long enough until the Spanish were willing to make peace. This allowed me pretty much to skip the usual settler production necessary in a Domination game. The AI's towns together with the first culture expansion was enough to cover all the territory.

Madrid flipped back to Spain in 680 AD, but by then I was already marching through Portugal and ready for the real Spanish war, which then lead to a re-capture of Madrid in 730 AD and Domination in 770 BC.

In retrospect I think I spent too many shields on FP, Heroic Epic, Leonardo's, Military Academy and Pentagon, and could have reached a faster finish by producing units instead. (Though playing with Armies was quite fun, admittedly... They went through the AIs like a hot knife through butter, despite meeting musketmen... :D)
 
Swords swords and medieval infantry.
At the end I upgraded a few horses.
9 settlers
12 workers
9 warriors
11 spearmen
1 archer (oops)
14 swords (most Elite)
11 horses (awaiting upgrade)
6 pikes
6 knights (only one saw battle)
5 Army's
32 medieval infantry.
 
Back
Top Bottom