PTW 1.27, Open class
I want to give kudos to the designers of this game -- it had a number of unusual elements that made it a blast to play. I had a great time, even if things did get sloppy for a while. Okay, for a couple of whiles.
Bottom line: domination victory in 880 AD, still in the middle ages. In game score was 6470, Jason score was 10176.
War summary:
30 BC: declared on Carthage
Late 200s AD: Got a *defensive* leader from an elite horse playing zone defense near Sabratha. (Most of my cities were empty of defenders for most of the game, and the horses were nearly useless on city attack.) I rushed the FP in Carthage with it -- not something I'd planned for at all! See below.
320 AD: made temporary peace with Carthage, leaving them with three towns: Sabratha, whatever-the-heck that town was west of Leptis Magna, and Oea, up in the tundra. Stacked about 20 obsolete units in Leptis Magna to try to prevent flippage (that town I can't remember the name of was Carthage's new capital!) and sent my new knights down to Zululand. (Change of plans -- had originally intended to attack Arabia next. It was Arabia's lack of useful-to-me luxes vis-a-vis Zululand that changed my mind. Luxes were a major problem for me midgame.)
About 350 AD: Zululand sneak-attacked while I was fretting about needing to wait another 8 turns for our ROP to expire. Wheeee, thank you Shaka!
430 AD and 510 AD: Two more great leaders showed up and were used to rush Leo's (score!) and Sun Tzu's (meh. but at least no one else had it). Somewhere in here, Oea flipped to me, leaving Carthage with only two cities. Yet another thing that surprised the heck out of me, but shouldn't have, in this case, given Carthage's complete cultural pitiful-ness. They were even worse-off than me.
About 650 AD: Re-declared on Carthage. I had Sipahis by this point, and got my golden age with a victory down in Zululand. Cash-flow was awesome; I didn't even need to save up to do the upgrades, and I could do 4-turn research towards Astronomy and Navigation at no more than 30% science.
660 AD: Carthage dead, declared on Arabia.
720 AD: Bye-bye Zulus. Starting rushing libraries and settlers like mad to fill in the empty space.
730 AD: So long Arabia.
750 AD: Got all my ducks in a row and my Sipahi in position to cut luxes, and declared on Greece.
800 AD: Declared on England so I could go grab their little island to the west of Zululand. Started paying *slightly* more attention to homeland defense. This means I left my last four or five Sipahi on the home continent instead of sending them to the galleys. Or maybe they were caravels by then.
810 AD: Into the home stretch. Greece was dead, resisters were being supressed, libraries were being tossed up left and right, and settlers were settling. I was starting to run out of things to do with all my money. Caravels were loaded in southwestern Greece and eastern Zululand over the next couple of turns and set sail for France and England (the latter having to wait about a turn for navigation).
880 AD: Victory! Military advisor says my military consists of 49 Sipahi, about 20 caravels and one lonely warrior, who'd been hanging out on that inaccessible mountain range on the Carthage coast suppressing barbs for about 1000 years.
T'was a blast, truly.
Things I'm proud of myself for doing right:
Primarily the naval movement. I'm usually pretty pitiful in co-ordination of naval and land units. This time I had the right number of boats in the right place within a turn or two of the right times, although I can't really claim credit on getting navigation right when I did as opposed to ten turns earlier or later. I also prioritized the disconnecting of resources when attacking each opponent (except the Zulu, whose resources were fairly inaccessible -- there I prioritized getting luxes for myself) to a greater extent than I've done before, and found it very powerful, especially in the slow Carthage war. The Numids were so tough that if I'd had to face a counterattack with stronger units than archers and warriors, I'd have been in trouble. As it was, I could tromp about with impunity, and I could afford to leave even nearby cities completely empty, knowing they couldn't be reached.
Things that worked out well, but not through my own doing:
The great leaders, of course. As I mentioned in the previous thread, I completely forgot to build a Forbidden Palace the whole BC period. Once I finally remembered, I was already at war, and couldn't really afford to donate one of my most productive cities to it. I finally compromised on building it in Uskudar, a plains city east of Sogut with fairly low corruption, but it was ungodly slow -- would've taken about 20 turns. I then got the leader with Uskudar still five turns short of completion. The FP went in Carthage, which I'd captured maybe five or ten turns earlier, and gave me a very nice (about 30 or 40% IIRC) boost in cash & science. None of the Carthage cities had been starved (see aforementioned Carthage lack of bothersome culture), so they were able to be productive quite rapidly, particularly Carthage itself and Leptis Magna. And the cash-flow impact of that area by the end of the game was huge.
Things I had problems with:
Happiness/luxes during the Carthage war. It was a slog, and war weariness was pretty bad. I was able to trade for wines from Greece for one 20-turn cycle, but I forgot how the renegotiate deals thing worked, and lost them after that, never to get them back until I captured them myself. Zululand never did build a harbor or hook up the necessary roads to let me trade with them, Arabia had nothing I needed, and England didn't explore that last little strip of sea between them and Greece until after the Carthage war was over. (And even at that point I somehow missed the trading opportunity until it was too late and everything was already taken.) I was finally able to trade for the Vikings' two luxes very late in the game when their trading partners had been eliminated. I had more riots during the Carthage war than I'd like to think about; I also forgot about the manage-happiness option in the governor settings. Actually I forgot that there was a governor at all.
As I said up top, though -- very fun game. I loved how the map gave with one hand (food and lux right nearby at the start, plenty of iron, rivers for cash, Sipahi!) and took away with the other (horses miles away, Carthage and their Numids on a freaking hill
, the isthmus that I never found, the difficulty of getting productive coastal cities).
So kudos again to the designers, and major kudos to everyone who played so well. Some of the game descriptions are amazing.
Renata
I want to give kudos to the designers of this game -- it had a number of unusual elements that made it a blast to play. I had a great time, even if things did get sloppy for a while. Okay, for a couple of whiles.
Bottom line: domination victory in 880 AD, still in the middle ages. In game score was 6470, Jason score was 10176.
War summary:
30 BC: declared on Carthage
Late 200s AD: Got a *defensive* leader from an elite horse playing zone defense near Sabratha. (Most of my cities were empty of defenders for most of the game, and the horses were nearly useless on city attack.) I rushed the FP in Carthage with it -- not something I'd planned for at all! See below.
320 AD: made temporary peace with Carthage, leaving them with three towns: Sabratha, whatever-the-heck that town was west of Leptis Magna, and Oea, up in the tundra. Stacked about 20 obsolete units in Leptis Magna to try to prevent flippage (that town I can't remember the name of was Carthage's new capital!) and sent my new knights down to Zululand. (Change of plans -- had originally intended to attack Arabia next. It was Arabia's lack of useful-to-me luxes vis-a-vis Zululand that changed my mind. Luxes were a major problem for me midgame.)
About 350 AD: Zululand sneak-attacked while I was fretting about needing to wait another 8 turns for our ROP to expire. Wheeee, thank you Shaka!
430 AD and 510 AD: Two more great leaders showed up and were used to rush Leo's (score!) and Sun Tzu's (meh. but at least no one else had it). Somewhere in here, Oea flipped to me, leaving Carthage with only two cities. Yet another thing that surprised the heck out of me, but shouldn't have, in this case, given Carthage's complete cultural pitiful-ness. They were even worse-off than me.
About 650 AD: Re-declared on Carthage. I had Sipahis by this point, and got my golden age with a victory down in Zululand. Cash-flow was awesome; I didn't even need to save up to do the upgrades, and I could do 4-turn research towards Astronomy and Navigation at no more than 30% science.
660 AD: Carthage dead, declared on Arabia.
720 AD: Bye-bye Zulus. Starting rushing libraries and settlers like mad to fill in the empty space.
730 AD: So long Arabia.
750 AD: Got all my ducks in a row and my Sipahi in position to cut luxes, and declared on Greece.
800 AD: Declared on England so I could go grab their little island to the west of Zululand. Started paying *slightly* more attention to homeland defense. This means I left my last four or five Sipahi on the home continent instead of sending them to the galleys. Or maybe they were caravels by then.
810 AD: Into the home stretch. Greece was dead, resisters were being supressed, libraries were being tossed up left and right, and settlers were settling. I was starting to run out of things to do with all my money.
Caravels were loaded in southwestern Greece and eastern Zululand over the next couple of turns and set sail for France and England (the latter having to wait about a turn for navigation).880 AD: Victory! Military advisor says my military consists of 49 Sipahi, about 20 caravels and one lonely warrior, who'd been hanging out on that inaccessible mountain range on the Carthage coast suppressing barbs for about 1000 years.
T'was a blast, truly.
Things I'm proud of myself for doing right:
Primarily the naval movement. I'm usually pretty pitiful in co-ordination of naval and land units. This time I had the right number of boats in the right place within a turn or two of the right times, although I can't really claim credit on getting navigation right when I did as opposed to ten turns earlier or later. I also prioritized the disconnecting of resources when attacking each opponent (except the Zulu, whose resources were fairly inaccessible -- there I prioritized getting luxes for myself) to a greater extent than I've done before, and found it very powerful, especially in the slow Carthage war. The Numids were so tough that if I'd had to face a counterattack with stronger units than archers and warriors, I'd have been in trouble. As it was, I could tromp about with impunity, and I could afford to leave even nearby cities completely empty, knowing they couldn't be reached.
Things that worked out well, but not through my own doing:
The great leaders, of course. As I mentioned in the previous thread, I completely forgot to build a Forbidden Palace the whole BC period. Once I finally remembered, I was already at war, and couldn't really afford to donate one of my most productive cities to it. I finally compromised on building it in Uskudar, a plains city east of Sogut with fairly low corruption, but it was ungodly slow -- would've taken about 20 turns. I then got the leader with Uskudar still five turns short of completion. The FP went in Carthage, which I'd captured maybe five or ten turns earlier, and gave me a very nice (about 30 or 40% IIRC) boost in cash & science. None of the Carthage cities had been starved (see aforementioned Carthage lack of bothersome culture), so they were able to be productive quite rapidly, particularly Carthage itself and Leptis Magna. And the cash-flow impact of that area by the end of the game was huge.
Things I had problems with:
Happiness/luxes during the Carthage war. It was a slog, and war weariness was pretty bad. I was able to trade for wines from Greece for one 20-turn cycle, but I forgot how the renegotiate deals thing worked, and lost them after that, never to get them back until I captured them myself. Zululand never did build a harbor or hook up the necessary roads to let me trade with them, Arabia had nothing I needed, and England didn't explore that last little strip of sea between them and Greece until after the Carthage war was over. (And even at that point I somehow missed the trading opportunity until it was too late and everything was already taken.) I was finally able to trade for the Vikings' two luxes very late in the game when their trading partners had been eliminated. I had more riots during the Carthage war than I'd like to think about; I also forgot about the manage-happiness option in the governor settings. Actually I forgot that there was a governor at all.
As I said up top, though -- very fun game. I loved how the map gave with one hand (food and lux right nearby at the start, plenty of iron, rivers for cash, Sipahi!) and took away with the other (horses miles away, Carthage and their Numids on a freaking hill
, the isthmus that I never found, the difficulty of getting productive coastal cities).So kudos again to the designers, and major kudos to everyone who played so well. Some of the game descriptions are amazing.
Renata
![[ptw]](/images/smilies/ptw.gif "PTW Icon [ptw]")
1.27 
) I built Barracks in my key central cities (later the border cities would pop-rush Libraries, some Temples, to expand the cultural radius in my shot for Domination). As my core cities grew to 6, I'd pop out a Settler, otherwise I kept building Chariots, once I had Horses.
