GOTM 15 - final spoiler

[Vynd]

Hats do not give religious tech, but they do give meditation. For Hatty to beat me to Polytheism she had to get Meditation from hat, he did not had Gems at capital.

Meditation is a religious tech (it establishes Buddhism) but I think you meant Mysticism. Even though Hatty doesn't start with Mysticism, I think that at this difficulty level it is entirely possible for her to research Polytheism before we do. Our research costs are 130% that of the AI at this difficulty. Mysticism normally costs 50 and Polytheism costs 100 (at standard speed, I don't have Epic speed numbers handy but I assume the proportions stay the same).

This means it will take 150 Beakers for Hatty to establish Hinduism. It will take use 130 beakers (130% of the normal cost). That's just a 20 beaker difference. If Hatty researches a bit faster than us she can beat us.

Now yes, we have Gems available. But only if we move the Settler on the first turn, so we're down one turn of research already. We can't mine the Gems yet, so they boost our commerce by a good amount but not a great amount. And working the Gems means our city will grow slowly. Meanwhile, Hatty starts with Two Settlers and Workers! And her cities grow nearly twice as fast as normal! So even if our commerce is a little higher than hers to begin with she can catch up or surpass us quickly. I can't remember exactly what terrain was around Hatty's starting area, but even working a couple of river tiles per city would probably be enough.

Now maybe Hatty did get lucky and pop Mysticism from a hut, and that's why she made it to Hinduism first. If that hadn't happend, though, there was still Gandhi out there. He starts with Mysticism, and had he chosen to research Polytheism first he would have established Hinduism for sure. There are other civs that could potentially have been in the game that also start with Mysticism. The point is: going for Hinduism is risky. It doesn't take some AI getting lucky with a hut for the human player to fail, given the difficulty level.

 

[Master Madness]

- Don't chase after Huts. All I got in GOTM15 were barbs, which killed my explorers. The information an explorer collects is far more important that any hut content.

I don't agree with this advice. In this GOTM I got bronze working from a hut and most of the time I get good things from huts. But maybe I am just lucky...

 

[DaviddesJ]

Oops, I meant to resign and submit a loss, but I forgot until after the deadline. Very frustrating experience. Contender level. I was just getting my defenses set up, when the first barb archer entered my territory. And... it defeated my quechua at 4% odds. Lost my capital in 2380 BC. Just after founding my second city, so, it didn't literally end my game. But I didn't have the heart to play on. (I tried counterattacking with my one nearby quechua, and that didn't work either.)

 

[Camien]

As for culture, I had 5 religions and all the cathedrals for all of them. Anyway, culture was almost imossible, but there was a small chance that with the correct timing you could pull off the cultural win.

Hello everyone.

I'm not exactly new to Civ or to GOTM but I rarely post but as I feel I seldom have to contribute anything in comparison to many of the posts from which I can learn (or well, should be able to learn) a lot of things.

As for many people the game went downhill rather fast for me but for a change I had some time at hand, so decided to give it another few goes to see what I could do. As I didn't think to have a real chance anyways I used the adventurer save.

Basically I decided on trying to for a cultural victory and as someone who doesn't have much experience in games on such a high difficulty I considered it prudent to look for some advice and read Godotnut's article on cultural victory at deity level.

He says you need to build the pyramids so that is what I did. Took me some experimenting but in the end I was able to do it around 1800 BC (built Stonehenge as well actually). So far so good, everything went rather well.

Now here's my problem. No matter how often I replayed, I never got more than one religion spread (Confucianism from Egypt) which of course blasted my chances on cultural victory.

I was wondering if anyone could help me out here. How can one make sure to get more religions spread (on a sidenote, I did not use theocracy at any point of the game)?

Best Regards
Camien

 

[Vynd]

Now here's my problem. No matter how often I replayed, I never got more than one religion spread (Confucianism from Egypt) which of course blasted my chances on cultural victory.

I was wondering if anyone could help me out here. How can one make sure to get more religions spread (on a sidenote, I did not use theocracy at any point of the game)?

Well there are two ways for religion to spread, "natural" free spreading of religion from the location where it was founded, and deliberate spreading of religion via missionaries. Religion is are more likely to spread naturally into cities that do not already have a religion. In fact they might be the only cities where it can happen. Some religions are more likely to spread this way than others. I think that basically the more advanced the religion-establishing technology is, the more easily and quickly it will spread on its own. I assume this is to help even out the religious mix so that the Hinduism and buddhism don't become the world's dominant religions each and every game.

Anyway, the point is that one way to try and get more religions is to have cities with no religion in them at all available for distant religions to spread into naturally. I can't remember exactly what the rules are on how the natural spread works. You don't need to know the location of the religion's holy city, or even the civ that possesses it. But I do think it needs to be possible for you to communicate with them. You can't be separated by ocean, or impenitrable mountains, or an unfriendly civilization or barbarians.

Those last two conditions could be part of why you didn't get more religions spreading to you. If Barbarian cities and/or Tokugawa were on the coast between you and the other civilizations then I don't think religion could spread to you that way.

The other way to get religion spread to you is via other civ's missionaries. Some civs love to send them anywhere they have Open Borders. Hatty is one of those civs. In this case she might have been too much of a good thing. She probably pushed Confucianism into every city you had, preventing other religions from spreading to you. Probably the only way to keep that from happening would be to close your borders to Hatty, but it's hard to say if that's worth the price. Another thing you could try would be establishing a new city or two late in the game and hoping a religion spreads into it before it can be missionaried.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Spoiler Victory or Defeat? :

I felt that the game settings would encourage a lot of players to try for a Cultural Victory.

I also figured that many players would fall behind in the tech race and thus would use the chance of a Diplomacy Victory as their last hope.

Wanting to do something a bit different, I planned to go for either a Conquest or a Domination Victory.

I didn't realise what a huge goal I'd set for myself, but I still went for it with gusto.

Gandhi launched his Space Ship in 1762 AD.

By the end of the game, I had managed to obtain 23 cities.

Base score: 2082
Final score: 4164

Spoiler Here's why I enjoyed this map :

Hatshepsut was far away and no other AI were on the continent with us. What a treat! Yes, seriously.

When I saw the initial screenshot, I expected that we'd be hemmed in pretty quickly, with little room to expand. I believed that we'd have an AI coming from the North East and one from the West, each taking early city locations, possibly even our Gems.

With the extra Settler being provided for the Adventurer class and with my experience with Diety level (arguably, that experience is quite limited), I planned to be able to build three cities before being hemmed in. I expected one of the opponents to have a lot of culture--although I was thinking that the culture would come from a religion and not from the Cultural Trait (Hatty had both, in my game). I expected the other AI to have a tough-to-crack capital but with other cities which would have no culture and thus would not have the cultural defense bonus early on, giving us the possiblity of being able to take one or two of their other cities in the early game.

Instead, what we received was even better.

If you were able to pump out Quetchuas and Settlers, balanced with a couple of Workers, you'd have a lot of territory early on for Deity level.

If you teched towards your favourite early military unit, you'd have the resource without needing to found more than two cities. Horses, Copper, and Iron were all incredibly easily within reach, which is not a normal situation for Deity level, or for any level, for that matter. There was also a lot of forest around, in case you would rather have made bows and arrows for your Archers.

Another advantage was our Unique Unit--on many of the lower levels, the AI will have Warriors for quite some time. Warriors are the bane of the Quetchua. A Quetchua starts with a Combat I promotion, meaning that it will fight at strength 2.2, mostly likely vs a 2 strength Warrior, and the odds of consistently winning battles are not high. However, vs an Archer, the Quetchua will have a strength of 4.2 vs a 3 strength Archer, which gives you much better odds. So the fact that the AI all start with only Archers for military units (I don't count Scouts) and the fact that they will never build Warriors, is a big plus for us.

Compound that fact with the concept that on Deity level, Barbarian Archers come very quickly, and you'll get a much lower percentage of Barb Warriors. Arguably, you'll get a ton of Barbarian activity, with many Warriors and Archers coming at you, but at least you'll get many early easy-to-defeat Archers, to help promote your Quetchuas.

Spoiler My early builds :

I played the Contender version of the game.

I planned to move to the Plains Hills. I wouldn't have done so without the hype in the pre-game discussion thread, but I jumped on the band wagon. Yet, hold up. What's my Worker supposed to do? I would be wasting a big portion of the Contender bonus while the Worker sat idle. So, when my Quetchua explored north-westward on turn 2, I saw the light--put the capital by the Rice and began using the Worker right away.

I ended up settling between two food resources, the Rice and the Sheep.

I played a practice map (I can't remember which one) just to see how many units I could build before I had to start paying for them. I think that the number was 5 units. That's all we had to work with. I had already started the game with 3 of those 5 units (the Quetchua, the Archer, and the Worker)! For me, with the Aggressive Trait making the building of a Barracks only take half as long, the choice was clear--I began by building a Barracks.

I felt that with the Aggressive Trait, I'd have enough time to build a Barracks and at least 2 Quetchuas before a Barbarian unit would be standing next to my capital. Yes, it would be cutting things close, but I was content to watch the Barbarian Animals run around my borders without engaging in battle with them.

The Barbarians came at me hot and heavy. I wanted Axemen, but it took me a while to getting around to researching Bronze Working. Even when I'd researched it, I found that the Copper sources were too far away from my capital to be of use early on. So I settled for using the Horses for my military, which I'd discovered in our borders, after teching towards Animal Husbandry for the Sheep.

I was eventually able to field an army of three Chariots, for attacking the Warriors, and two or so Quetchuas, for attacking the Archers. Each turn was tight. I lost what I believed were some of my key units in some fights with Barbarians, such as a fully healed Chariot with Combat I and Shock (+25% vs Melee units) Promotions losing to a Barbarian Warrior that had just moved into a Forest. Meanwhile, I also held out against impossible odds--two fortified units fended off 4 units in one turn and 2 more on the next turn, so I felt that it all balanced out.

By going for the Barracks early on, I'd given up the opportunity to fog-bust early on, so I had more Barbs come my way. However, I had the ability to promote my units to get promotions like Shock (vs Melee units) and Cover (vs Archery units) early on. If the units won a battle, they'd automatically get a second promotion immediately. It was a trade off and I wasn't necessarily better or worse off than the strategy of skipping the Barracks and pumping out a few more unpromoted Quetchua fog-busters plus one or two city defenders, in case a fog-buster was overrun.

I expanded slowly, only getting one early city. I placed it so that I could get two Flood Plains, a Clam, and some Gold. The early research from the Gems and the Gold helped, but it was the additional happiness from them that really excited me.

Here's the interesting part. In my practice game, I decided that I'd go after The Great Lighthouse. I felt that I had a good chance of getting it, since it couldn't be sped up by resources such as Stone or Marble that the AI might have. It also required you to first build a Lighthouse. Since our capital started with a Fish resource, regardless of whether you settled in place or if you moved onto the Plains Hills, you'd eventually want to build a Lighthouse for the extra food from the Fish, so why not get it early on? Yet, did it still make sense for me to build a Lighthouse when I'd moved my capital to a location that did not have any water resources?

Well, I tried anyway. I built a Barracks. Several military units. A Lighthouse. I started building and chopping The Great Lighthouse. I chopped three forests. However, I wasn't determined enough. I missed building it by 2 turns. Ouch. A lot of my early production went down the drain.

With The Great Lighthouse, I felt that I could have built a coastal economy and thus kept up with the slower teching AI, being able to trade with them for the scraps of their research. Yet, I'd failed. Further, with a 90 Hammer Lighthouse that would never serve any useful purpose and another 280+ Hammers wasted on a failed Wonder, I could have done many more things. Perhaps had a few more military units--enough to go and seriously harm Hatty early on. Perhaps had another couple of Quetchuas and two more Settlers, allowing me to spam cities before the Barbarians or Hatty beat me to the locations.

To be serious enough, I would have had to have done one of the following things:
- I could have chopped all 4 of my Forests, at the expense of not connecting up some of my resources with Roads and suffering with some unhealtiness
- I could have stopped working the Gems and instead worked a Mined Plains Hills (without a River) for several turns. The trade-off in science would have been about 90 beakers, but I would have been able to make up for those beakers in the long run
- I could have played more risky and not snuck in a Quetchua (which took two turns to build) about 6 turns before The Great Lighthouse was to be completed. I'd lost a border guard and would have had a couple of resources pillaged before I could get another unit there in time, but at least I would have had my Wonder (although it would have been cutting it as close as possible, what with Toku trying to build it on the same turn)

In hindsight, none of those options sound like a bad short term trade-off. Yet, try and tell yourself such a thing at the time and you'll find that it's not a trade-off with which you will be comfortable, seeing as how each of the things that I could have done did help me out in the long run, just not nearly as much.

So the lesson is to either forgo Wonders altogether at Deity level or else to take them extremely seriously.

I suppose that another option might have been to not build my second city early on, but it took me so long to research Mining, Fishing, Sailing, and Masonry, not to mention getting Hunting and Animal Husbandry first, that I really couldn't have saved myself time by skipping building the Settler. Further, I then needed to get Bronze Working in time for my chopping to be useful, but at least I could start building The Great Lighthouse without requiring this tech.

Another Worker could have been a good choice--build an early Worker, forget an early Settler, and then have only one city to work, so all of your Worker actions, including chopping, get completed in time. However, this choice would have required some map intelligence; as I said, I was expecting to be hemmed in and I wanted my first Settler out as early as the Barbs would allow.

I don't recall my exact tech order, but I know that it began with:
Mining (for the Gems)
Hunting (for Scouts and Spearmen--I think that I was influenced by our WOTM game as Shaka)
Animal Husbandry (for the Sheep)

Spoiler My first war and some resulting luck :

My starting Quechua explored to the North West, while my starting Archer explored to the North East.

I had planned to move to the Plains Hills and I didn't want my decision to be swayed, even if there were resources such as an Ivory, a Beaver, and a Cow hidden in the fog of war of our original starting location. Of course, after having moved to the Plains Hills, I realised that I only made a decisive call to MOVE to the Plains Hills and not necessarily to settle there.

My Archer quickly met the Coast and zig-zagged his way in a Northerly direction, hoping to find a way further East.

My Quetchua was going mostly North West until he almost ran into an animal and then changed his track more to the North. He eventually switched to a path to the North East when my Archer met up with Hatty's Scout.

Now I had three possibilities that I believed could be going on here:
1) Hatty was to the North
2) Another AI was to the North. Having just met that other AI, Hatty was now sending off her Scout to explore elsewhere
3) There was a dead-end a couple of squares away to the North and the Scout had turned around at that dead-end

I'd be happy with 1) or 2), so I pressed onwards.

Hahaha, Hatty, your foolish Scout gave you away! You should have first snuck your Scout to the South, past my units in the fog of war, and then come back North to meet my Archer, just to thoroughly confuse me.

Anyway, I managed to grab an early Worker, but I was quite disappointed. At Deity level, the AI start with two Workers--if you can't grab both, you might as well not grab either one, as the AI will come back fast and will hit you hard.

I defended with my Quetchua from an unpromoted Egyptian Archer that attacked me across a River. Smooth move, Hatty. Free experience for me!

I then guarded my Quetchua with my Archer, while the Quetchua healed. For several years, I became a nuisance to Hatty, picking off the odd Archer that would come out to challenge me, but I knew that it was only a holding action.

I lacked the military resources to take any of her cities. I lacked the military might to do some real damage to her. I lacked the Hammers (care of the Lighthouse and The Great Lighthouse gambit) to get enough military to hurt her badly enough.

However, there was some interesting news that turned into good news. Hatty's Scout came South. It went towards our original starting location. I never saw it again. I'm guessing that a lion is still picking Egyptian sack cloth out of its teeth.

Yet, Hatty had two Scouts! A second one showed up two turns later on the West side of my capital. It went South and then came up to my capital, just to scout out of land there. I wasn't very pleased that she now "officially knew" where to send her armies (instead of just cheating and mysteriously showing up with armies without ever having scouted me).

This Scout had to die. I sent a Quetchua after it, but the Scout ran away too quickly. I gave chase. Somehow, without any promotions or fortification, this Egyptian Scout stood in a Forest and fended off a Barb Archer, having 0.5 health remaining! I was utterly astonished.

However, I also knew how to capitalize on my good luck and my Quetchua quickly approached the Scout--it had mostly healed when I arrived, so it ran away again. The next turn, when I found it, however, it was back down to 0.7 health, although it had been at 0.9 health the previous turn. I wasn't sure what to think, other than to guess that the Scout had survived yet another battle, defending in the Forest.

Regardless, the Scout chose to heal again, so I was finally able to take it down.

Unfortunately, it wasn't long before my initial Quetchua, promoted with a Woodsman I promotion, fortified in a Forest, died to a lone attacking Archer of Hatty's. So much for my "early rush". My Archer high-tailed it out of there as two more Archers showed up to scare him off.

It wasn't long before Hatty had expanded to several cities and was fielding big stacks of Archers and Spearmen. Fortunately, she seemed pre-occupied with hunting down Barbs, so she mostly ignored my two cities. We eventually made peace when an Egyptian Galley came and threatened my Clam.

Spoiler Meeting more AI :

Why would anyone build a Work Boat explorer, which becomes incredibly vulnerable to Barbarian Galleys? Well, the trade off of meeting the AI is often worth the potential loss of said Work Boat. Usually, you would send out a Work Boat because you lack the Sailing tech.

I had Sailing, so I made a couple of Galley explorers.

I'd already lost out on The Great Lighthouse, so I had to at least get some usage out of Sailing, right?

I met Gandhi, Peter, and Toku.

Now I found out who was the Wonder-hoarder. Gandi had built The Oracle, Stonehenge, and The Pyramids. He would later use a Great Engineer on The Great Library and he also managed to build The Hanging Gardens.

It was Toku who had built The Great Lighthouse. I really wanted to capture it, but I didn't see how such a thing would be feasible.

I couldn't find any other AI, although I'd mostly mapped out the continent with Gandhi and Peter. Toku, however, wouldn't let me pass. I felt that I could declare war on him, but he had Galleys as well and I was afraid of his retribution, so I let that idea fizzle out.

Spoiler Gandhi the Terrorist :

It was obvious that Gandhi had grabbed Feudalism with The Oracle. He had Longbowmen--6 or more in some of his cities--along with Swordsmen and other military units.

Gandhi decided to take his frustrations and inner angst out on Peter. He should have listened to his monks, but someone must have peed in his Corn Flakes, as he skipped his morning meditations and went straight to war. When he was through, Peter's lands had been pillaged, the cities had been sacked, and Peter was relegated to two one-square islands.

Peter had threatened me, insisting that I help out in the war, so I obliged. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to mount enough of a force to be able to get there in time. One Quetchua was able to kill an Indian Horseman, but then he died to a Barb Axeman (go figure).

Peter simply died too quickly.

Over the course of the game, Peter became Friendly with me, but he wasn't of much use--after a couple of early tech trades, he became more of a nuisance and just ended up threatening me to give him techs instead of offering anything up for trade.

Spoiler Mid-game plans :

I built a Barracks in every city. When Metal Casting was researched, I also made sure to build Forges in every city. Barracks, Forges, Settlers, Workers, and military units. That's all that I was making. Still, I could never seem to field an army large enough to take on Hatty. I worked out some calculations, thinking that a 52 unit army would be ideal for taking minimal losses and for taking out all of her cities. Great. I had about 7 military units and I also lacked important technologies, such as Construction.

Basically, I barely had enough units to take out a few Barb cities. Fortunately, I had focused on this effort, or else Hatty would have grabbed the cities first. As it was, by the end of the game, I believe that I had 12 cities on our starting continent.

I was able to focus on military techs and thus I ignored founding religions or getting Great People from techs (i.e. Music, etc). Even then, I couldn't keep up with the pace.

As the game dragged on and it took me more than 40 turns to research a tech, I knew that I was in trouble. So, I gave up on massive military output, picked one city for the Heroic Epic, and began building Banks, Libraries, Courthouses, and all sorts of other buildings. I believe that Banking was the last tech which I was able to research before the techs got too expensive for having no multiplier buildings in my cities.

Spoiler What to do with my military :

Okay, so I had a reasonably sized military (approx 6 Maces, 4 Knights, 8 Catapults, a few Swordsmen, etc). I had 4 or so Galleys, as well.

Hatty was out of the question. However, opportunity struck when Japan and the US went to war. Each side asked for me to join in on the war, with the US asking first.

I thought about that decision for a long time. Toku's cities were closer to our continent. However, I'd finally managed to get Open Borders with Toku. Since I lacked Astronomy, his land was my only link to trade routes and resources on the other continent.

So, if I declared war on Toku, I would no longer be able to trade with Japan, Persia, or the US. If I stayed out of the war or was asked to fight on Toku's side, I would still be able to trade with at least Japan and Persia. So, the map layout dictated my choice.

When Toku asked, I hopped on the band wagon. I certainly didn't want to break our fragile Open Borders agreement. I also didn't want to be left out of the opportunity to capture some cities in the bargain.

As it was, the pickings were slim. By the time I got my army over to their continent, Japan had eaten up most of the US' lands.

Foolishly, Japan lost two or three captured cities to cultural flips--but not to the US--to Persia. So Persia ended up becoming a power house without even having to go to war. More on that point--in watching the replay, I figured out why Persia had a city named Boston but there wasn't any evidence of a war declaration between Persia the US. It seems that the Barbs captured Boston early on and Persia took it over, two turns later. Boston was actually used to flip one of the Japanese-captured-US-cities and place it into Persian hands. Pretty neat, huh?

Anyway, I managed to get 4 cities in the North West end of the continent.

Japan kept making peace with the US and then declaring war again--I couldn't rely on Toku to finish off Roosevelt, so I took that task upon myself. The last US city to fall was on a one-square island, south of the Japanese capital. I lost a few units assaulting it, but the city was raised and I'd taken out one of the AI. Woohoo!

Spoiler The world hates Japan :

Okay, so everyone in the world hated Japan. Peter, I believe, was cautious, but Toku was the #1 enemy of everyone else--except for me. I was actually Friendly with Toku and had achieved +16 relations points at our relationship's peak.

Yet, Toku's lack of cultural planning in the war was his downfall. Cyurs, with his new resources and new cities, obtained indirectly from the US, without requiring a war, became the world's military master. Artillery, Cavalry, Riflemen, Sam Infantry, and later Marines were available, and Cyrus decided it was time to use them. Only a few turns after the US was destroyed, Cyrus went after Toku. Frigates came, but soon Ironclads and then Destroyers were Cyrus' naval units of choice.

Toku was a sack of bricks dropped in a lake--his empire and his ships sunk faster than you'd believe.

At this time, Toku was mostly defending with Macemen (Samurai) and Musketmen, but he'd begun upgrading to Riflemen and Cavalry, where he could.

I was still using Swordsmen, Macemen, Catapults, and Knights.

However, I wanted in on the action. There was no way that I could lay a finger on Cyrus. Toku was going to die whether I sat back and watched or whether I helped.

So I teched to Riflemen and then collected money. I upgraded as many units as I could to Riflemen and then sent them in with my Knights and Catapults.

I got a little too aggressive and I lost almost all of my Knights in one turn--they walked ahead of the rest of my army and the stack of my only 4 Knights on the continent turned into 1 Knight with 0.1 health.

As it was, I could still hardly keep up with Cyrus. He pillaged, defended from counter-attacks, and then walked up to each of Toku's cities with stacks of 20+ units, taking most of the cities down in a turn.

I managed to capture about 4 of Toku's cities on his main continent, but I miscalculated and missed out on getting his captial, with The Great Lighthouse. The Wonder was expired for Cyrus but I still could have made use of it.

Cyrus also managed to capture the two holy cities, for which he used two Great Prophets that he'd been saving. It's not like I had a Great Prophet lying around, so the situation didn't bother me a whole lot.

I also managed to capture three Japanese island cities. Cyrus grabbed the last one, using Gunships and Marines.

Spoiler The end game :

So, two AI had been eliminated, with Gandhi and Cyrus being the resulting super-powers. Hatty was still militaristically strong, but she wasn't as far ahead in the Space Race.

Gandhi had built the United Nations. Actually, Gandhi had about 90% of the World Wonders.

Hatty only built her holy city's building.

Cyrus built three holy cities' buildings, had captured The Great Lighthouse, and had built a couple of random Wonders, such as The Parthenon, The Colossus, and Versailles, but otherwise, couldn't seem to beat Gandhi to the Wonders.

Gandhi's capital of Delhi looked like a human player's capital would on Noble level (at least, once you've played the game for a while to get good enough at it), where the F9 screen with the Top cities of the world page gives you a horizontal scrollbar, just to see all of the Wonders in your capital.

I could have voted Cyrus in as the Diplomatic winner, but I wanted to hang in as long as I could.

Near the end of the game, Gandhi had stacks of mech infantry to my lesser numbers of Riflemen and Grenadiers. He had Destroyers and Battleships to my Caravels and Galleons. It seemed easier to let him fly off into space. I could plot his downfall in the future, while he'd sent off his best minds into the great beyond. Little would he know that life already existed on Alpha Centauri and that his militaristic ways would not be so welcome there.

Congratulations to anyone who even attempted to play this map! The effort was certainly worth it!