Spaceship defeat to Washington 1973
Score: 4619
The Plan: Count resources until so confused that I decide to settle in the sea. Build Worker, Warrior, Stone, Paper, Scissors. Overall strategy: launch the eiffel tower as a spaceship because it looks a bit like one and should fool everybody. But my real aim in this game was to take it s-l-o-w-l-y because I always rush, rush, rush too much!
The start: 1NW, north of the rice to get some more hills in. And to allow a future city by the fish to the east. The gold was a bonus. Second city was off to the west, 1 south of the lake. I expect a few others to have 2 cities on exactly the same sites? Met Mali & India quite quickly. At this point I still hadn't decided on an overall strategy. No religion so cultural was on hold. Decided to give Mansu a good thrashing, although his UU is quite tough at this stage. He had the copper in the west in his border, so then I rushed to Iron. Missed a few turns as I forgot you can get the iron outside of your FC so long as it's in your border, I was building a settler to occupy it.
London was being into a GP city and early teching was going OK. Here's my early tech dates. Feel free to comment, snigger, or point out the obvious flaws. I think my indecision about which way to go is evident
3600 BC: Agric
3040 BC: Bronze Work
2720 BC: Wheel
2400 BC: Animal Husb
2040 BC: Writing
1840 BC: Pottery
1600 BC: Masonry
1040 BC: Iron
925 BC: Mystic
765 BC: Horse
375 BC: Alphabet
Although Mansu and Asoka tech like lightening, I wasn't doing so bad at the 500AD point, more or less level on points with these 2 and hadn't met anyone else yet. I can see a problems in my approach now. Should've concentrated purely on military techs, not so much 'growth' techs. I got Cats in 175 AD and was not going to attack MM until I had at least 8 of these. It was annoying that Asoka was weaker than me for all of the BC years, yet I couldn't get to attack him. And the lack of horses didn't help. Naval techs, perhaps?
First war with MM in 720AD. Went for a couple of key cities to the south of my second city. Weakened too much to continue, so left his smaller cities in the north west - for now.
By about 1000 AD I was falling behind. The main problem seemed to be lack of production. Only York could maintain any decent rate. London was OK at production, but I had it maxed for GP points most of the time, which it was succeeding to do. Finally eliminated MM in 1450 but by now was falling serously behind in the tech race. Hatti was way in the lead on points, with Washi and Asoka behind, then me, with HC and Nappy trailing. Somehow it seemed that a fairly good start had got totally mired in the years from 500 - 1500. This is common for me on any level higher than noble.
Next problem was ill health reducing city growth. Even by about 1950, my largest 2 cities were size 10 or 11, with the rest at 6 - 9 but all struggling to get going. Towards the end this was cured and I had a growth and tech surge which actually started to seriously gain points on the leaders. I figured there was no way I could win so I'd just tech and grow to get the best score possible. Washington launched in 1973.
As my aim was to take this game slowly, and I certainly had done much, much more city micromanagement in the early game, all that remains is to check how long this game took......4 hours 40 mins!!!! What???? Surely some mistake? Probably due to the little warmongering I did. Apart from 1 submarine at the end, I didn't build one naval unit in the whole game.
Is there no *obvious* way to win this one? Military was a problem due to no horses, MM early UU. Space was a problem due to being up against the fast techers. If I started again, I'd probably try for cultural. Overall, a game I thoroughly enjoyed with lots of interesting problems and a challenging map. Thanks!
It was a great fun!
And with diplo penalties for trading with both Hatty and Capac/Louis I couldn't get them all to vote for me at the same time.
