Well I'm back after a LONG hiatus and the addiction is in full force. First thing, I really enjoyed this game. I don't think I played all that well, but I'm still in the process of relearning a few things.
I didn't take detailed notes, but a few things from memory.
It took me a bit to realize I was alone with Bismarck and that he was crippled by the poor start. I took territory early, but not nearly aggressively enough. I think I was concerned about taking on too many unproductive cities on his crappy land. I wasn't focused very well on the research side either and could have been a lot more efficient.
The remote AIs reached me pretty quickly and all three were very far ahead of me on the power graph and tech. Once I realized my military options were limited, I decided to make a beeline for space race. I built up my economy and spent a lot of effort spreading my religion around the world for the commerce. I ended up getting nearly every city on the planet under my religion by the end which was a nice boost with Wall Street in the shrine city. It also kept the more powerful AIs happy with me over the latter half of the game.
Once I figured out my plan for the end game, I got a lot more focused and managed to slowly tech, lightbulb, and trade my way into tech parity. During this time, I built a few modern units to take out Bismarck, but Cathy DOWed on him just prior. I had to jump in sooner than I planned to take my share of the spoils! This of couse slowed down my economy a bit dealing with some light war weariness.
I think Toku got Apollo first and both Napoleon and Cathy followed soon after. Toku had all 5 chassis built before I even finished Apollo. I did a nice job of timing my spaceship builds to tech completion and pulled a victory out from last place in score around 1952.
There was a ton I could have done better, so I'm glad I managed to eke out any victory condition. The lack of focus in the beginning nearly killed me. Pulling out the victory was that much sweeter because of it.
Thanks for the great map!
I didn't take detailed notes, but a few things from memory.
It took me a bit to realize I was alone with Bismarck and that he was crippled by the poor start. I took territory early, but not nearly aggressively enough. I think I was concerned about taking on too many unproductive cities on his crappy land. I wasn't focused very well on the research side either and could have been a lot more efficient.
The remote AIs reached me pretty quickly and all three were very far ahead of me on the power graph and tech. Once I realized my military options were limited, I decided to make a beeline for space race. I built up my economy and spent a lot of effort spreading my religion around the world for the commerce. I ended up getting nearly every city on the planet under my religion by the end which was a nice boost with Wall Street in the shrine city. It also kept the more powerful AIs happy with me over the latter half of the game.
Once I figured out my plan for the end game, I got a lot more focused and managed to slowly tech, lightbulb, and trade my way into tech parity. During this time, I built a few modern units to take out Bismarck, but Cathy DOWed on him just prior. I had to jump in sooner than I planned to take my share of the spoils! This of couse slowed down my economy a bit dealing with some light war weariness.
I think Toku got Apollo first and both Napoleon and Cathy followed soon after. Toku had all 5 chassis built before I even finished Apollo. I did a nice job of timing my spaceship builds to tech completion and pulled a victory out from last place in score around 1952.
There was a ton I could have done better, so I'm glad I managed to eke out any victory condition. The lack of focus in the beginning nearly killed me. Pulling out the victory was that much sweeter because of it.
Thanks for the great map!
I knew you had it in you - to create the perfect war-map! At least for me it was one of the most entertaining war game so far in this series. There was one other Immortal game (Mehmed?) which was great fun, and WOTM3 was great as well with the disastrous starting area, and the Deity with Huayna Capac was excellent (grrr, I still remember Thorrez victory!), and GOTM8 (Huayna Capac, Continents, Emperor) which was THE game which totally humiliated me (space ship loss to Germany, my avatar is a screen shot where I nuke on of his towns in despair). This game reminds me of that - constant struggle from start to moder age. By the gods - give me more of these maps! 
I don't know what happened really, but I screw up the early game massively! My performance between 500 BC and 500 AD reminds me of my early CivFanatics game when I didn't have a clue what I was doing! How is it possible to play that bad? And it reminds me of when I read spoilers of Gosha, Lexad, Balbes, Obormot, and the other Kings of Speed, and I become embarrassing aware of my ineptitude.
on the rice to the south.
I was very close to smashing my computer with a sledge hammer, but then I realized I've never lost an Immortal GOTM month before, and this was not going to be the first. So I strike back and grab two of her cities, and make peace. Build up more units, redeclare and march on. Then I notice the French guy marching units to the frontier and:
This is more than 100%, so my research stopped, which let Toku race ahead of me.
Why, Harok, why did you go for Cow too? 
At least you played a better game than me 
I have compared the event log from Cactus Pete to see where we deviate. CP manages to churn out the first cities faster than me. This is probably due to the challenger penalty, but the main difference is obvious once the research rate is compared. I've extracted the techs from our event logs and we're pretty even up to turn 85. Then something happens: CP's research continues to grow, while my grows very slowly. Take a look at the data below:
