could win from this position but not in the way I played it
in retrospect I should have either -
* closed borders and made peace with Peter at this point
* or invaded peter and not stopped when he capitulated to hamarabi
as it is I let hamarabi make Peter a vassal which just goes to show that the AI isn't completely stupid. Hamarabi managed to cross my land to defeat and vasslise another Civ - and thus win the game
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started in London
game started not welly - bodged an axe rush ended up pillaging brennus to extinction and capturing two cities (oxford) but unable to capture his capital (southampton). it had 7 archers with garrison
dispatched him with invention of catapults and captured his island (renamed Jersey) with astonomy (for some reason he could settle an island without astronomy but I couldn't get there !)
the other AI's had from an early stage a huge lead in espionage, Peter particularly, so I spent a fortune on that in the late game playing catch up (perhaps not wisely). I didn't use my spies at all well. I forgot to post spies at first but eventually posted two in my frontier cities. Peter stole assembly line from me. bit cheeky
i was playing victoria and i got so many great generals I had them stacking up at one point. I had two cities with 2 instructors, 1 with west point. Both with academies.
don't appear to be producing enough troops although I have two cities churning them out most of the time. London isn't a great hammer site but has west point and iron works. Glascow (was Zulu but renamed) has mines and those statues. good war city
no specialists apart from free ones. don't really understand that part of the game. don't know where I'd put them
too many jack of all trade cities.
far too indecisive about attacking Peter earlier. he was way off the scale on spies so it was a mystery how many troops he had. but he kept on sending cossacks against marines so I hoped to whittle him down - but left the killer blow too late
I also got distracted into building a navy to surprise Peter. I actually captured one city (libyan) with a bombardment from the sea and a tank attack. I gifted it to persia (it would have flipped anyway) but the navy was too prone to air attack to cross half the map to attack peter. expensive waste of resources.
always nervous about having two frontiers but dealing with Hanarabi was a potential problem and his land was of variable quality so I headed east. liberated one of his cities from the zulus, nodwengu. rubbish city and easy plus point. fouled things up by accidentally invading sumeria after he had vassalised it. short war. I didn't want . but eventually it was called off by the AP. strange as babylon had AP but wouldn't make peace.
captured a city late in game (renamed Leeds) but couldn't exend its borders into russia (don't know why because I spent a fortune in coin finishing temples, globe etc)
razed two sumerian tundra cities I didn't like the look of and Babylon promptly settled there (ouch).
couldn't get research past 50% in mid game - had to switch most cities to wealth to catch up on tech.
help
move against Darius when I declared war as I underestimated his military strength and lost a lot of units when I should have waited in the border city for his stack. Lesson learned.
