Gotm 37 Final Spoiler - Game Submitted

[jefferee]

I took the adventurer save, and got a spaceship win in 1952. Not bad considering I usually play at Prince.

Quiet game--three wars in total, and I declared two of them and incited the third.

Fought one war with Bismarck around 500-800, took most of his territory, and settled for some techs. Wiped him out with a second war around the middle ages or so. In both cases I would have been better served by waiting for overwhelming military superiority before declaring war.

Between those two wars, Napoleon, Catherine and Tokugawa showed up with their caravels (oddly enough, in that order) and I was actually able to trade for some techs through a good chunk of the mid-game. My cottage economy kept getting stronger, and by the 1200s or so I had the most populous civ in the game.

I was able to build the Taj Mahal with a well-timed GE, and also got the UN by beelining to Mass Media, figuring a diplomatic victory was my only hope. However, the population was pretty close to a four-way split, so I would have needed both Tokugawa and Napoleon to vote for me. As they happened to be each others' worst enemies, I was never able to pull that off, especially since Napoleon and Catherine had the same state religion, Confucianism (founded by Napoleon). As for the other religions, Bismarck founded Taoism and Buddhism, and Tokugawa got everything else. I was eventually able to break up the France/Russia lovefest by getting the Free Religion resolution passed at the UN, but still couldn't pull off the diplo victory.

However, I had been edging back into the tech race, and decided to attempt a space race win. I was the fourth civ to finish the Apollo project but Catherine was the only serious threat to my space race win. I bribed Napoleon to declare war, which slowed her down a bit, but I still had to repeatedly sabotage production of her stasis chamber or I would have lost by at least ten turns. Oddly, I never had a spy captured, which was definitely a good thing since any of the other military forces could have crushed me like a bug at just about any point during the game.

Lessons learned:
-I should scout more before traversing 10+ squares to found my second city next to metal.
-I should build twice as many troops as I think I'm going to need before declaring war.
-Winning a diplomatic victory is a lot harder than getting elected as secretary-general.
-Sabotage ftw!

 

[ianw1610]

Diplomacy was never a problem for me, and I fought no wars. Similar to Htadus, I never met Catherine the Great, but simply received a message, quite early, that "The Russian Civilization has been destroyed". Toku and Nappy were in a long, long war against one another and paid no attention to me. My neighbour "Otto von" was Friendly with me initially, due to shared religion - he even traded unique technologies with me after relations reached +11! After Free Religion he was still Pleased with me.

My strategy was to go for a cultural win. Being a small map, this meant that just 6 cities and 3 religions / 3 temples per city would enable each of the 3 legendary cities to build 3 cathedrals. Apart from Madrid, the 2 other legendary cities were Barca - to the west of Madrid - and Seville - a GP farm to the north-west of Madrid.

I didn't pick up a single World Wonder in the whole game, which slowed me down immensely - missed out narrowly on both the Oracle and Parthenon early on, although the compensatory gold came in useful.

Also, my Great Artist management was badly aligned... settled 3 GAs in my Hermitage city, Barca... that city went legendary a long time before Madrid and Seville... I should have settled 1 or 2 of them elsewhere or kept them for further culture bombs at the end. Due to the absence of a World Wonder, GA generation was slow, although I was successfully able to prevent the Artist gene pool from any pollution.

So, ultimately, I achieved a comparatively slow Cultural Victory in 1944AD. This is the 7th time I have won a game in the top 2 difficulty levels, but all of the previous 6 were by way of the far easier "Religious" victory condition, so all-in-all a very pleasing result!!

 

[Harok]

First Spoiler

Update -
After getting Astronomy from Liberalism I quickly invaded Russia with tons of Conquistadors, Cats, and Maces. She had obviously been weakened by Napolean with her capital taken at some point as it was no longer Moscow but she had managed to take it back as Moscow was hers. After her I moved on to France with the highly promoted units which soon upgraded to Cavalry.

He was quite a bit tougher but still gave up the cities I wanted, which provided most of the wonders. After that I moved on towards Toku who was about even, maybe slightly ahead, of me in techs but the vanilla AI isn't very smart so I was able to take his good cities also.

I think this was around 1700-1750 and I wish I had just completed a domination victory but instead continued on the path to trying to get the cow. So I started a second war with all of them in turn to wipe out a few secondary cities and make sure they wouldn't mount any comeback, I think I even wiped out Napolean at this time because the motherland unhappiness was being a problem.

Next I went into a science spree and flew ahead from a combination of a monster cottage/tons of settled great people capital with a mostly specialist based economy while running Caste and Representation. A couple of captured cities had an academy already and lots of cottages so I left those but everywhere else had farms and windmills.

I had to gift a couple of cities away to keep from going over the domination limit and then just continued to grow and grow while researching future tech after future tech while reworking the land with groups of 4 workers. The last 30 turns or so (probably should have done it sooner) I even farmed over my best cottages and most resources and built a massive army of modern armor, gunships (upgraded Cavalry), and artillery with a few stealth bombers. It was fun trying to position them all so I could conquer the world in one final turn.

And that was when I realized I made a major blunder, attacking amphibiously meant I couldn't use the blitz function of modern armor. Oops. I turned out to be well short of units because of this but still managed to take over most of globe. I think Toku had 3 or 4 cities left, 1 of which I should have won but really nasty RNG got me and another when I forgot gunships couldn't take a city. Cathy was down to a single city that I failed to notice while setting up my units or she founded really late. Well in the first spoiler I said I planned on making lots of these types of mistakes so it wasn't a surprise to me.

All in all I had a lot of fun playing the map although the cow is something I certainly don't plan on going for again any time soon. Those 200 turns of doing very little other than making sure I didn't hit the domination limit and reworking the land wasn't much fun but that was self inflicted. I did learn a lot though.

I ended up with a base score of 10815 in 2049. For some reason I was scared to wait another turn that the points wouldn't count or something. I also didn't spam settlers all over which I'm not sure if that really increases your score or not.

A screen shot of my capital right before I completely farmed/windmilled it -

Spoiler :

 

[DynamicSpirit]

A screen shot of my capital right before I completely farmed/windmilled it -

You forgot to settle one of your great scientists. You'll never be able to get much science output from any one city if you make noob mistakes like that y'know

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Hmmm, +250% from buildings.
+25 library
+25 university
+25 observatory
+25 laboratory
+50 academy
+50 Oxford University
= 200%

So where's the other 50% come from? You have 5 religions so could have 5 monasteries but those will be obsolete. Or (... sudden suspicion ...) does being obsolete mean you can't build any more but the existing ones still give you the additional science?

 

[Harok]

You forgot to settle one of your great scientists. You'll never be able to get much science output from any one city if you make noob mistakes like that y'know

Lol. I think I used him for a golden age since it was so late.

Hmmm, +250% from buildings.
+25 library
+25 university
+25 observatory
+25 laboratory
+50 academy
+50 Oxford University
= 200%

So where's the other 50% come from? You have 5 religions so could have 5 monasteries but those will be obsolete. Or (... sudden suspicion ...) does being obsolete mean you can't build any more but the existing ones still give you the additional science?

I thought Oxford was 100% but not positive. I only had 4 monasteries in the capital as one of them came from Toku and I already had obsoleted them so it can't be from those. Not positive DS.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Just checked - yeah you're right, Oxford is +100%.

Hmmm, that means theres' lots of games I've played that I really should've prioritised Oxford a lot more than I actually did...

 

[toller pretzl]

Conquest victory in 1710 (1705)

I don't finish military victories often. Moving all the units around tends to become a drag for me - it was the same in this game. Towards the end it became a real chore

Bismark - Finished by chariot rush
Napoleon - declared war on me, derailing my plan to get Toku next. He didn't have galleons, I did.
Toku - up next. I was fighting longbows with cannon for most of the game. Toku was advanced in science but refused to go the gunpowder-chemistry route.
Cathy - long trade relationship, converted to my religion (confuc), joined me in the war against Napoleon. She was friendly to me for most of the game, so I conquered her last as a necessity.

I was never close to domination. It suprised me that even late in the game, adding up the land of all the players didn't quite add up to 68 percent. I couldn't see how the remaing land would amount to 32 percent

One neat thing I did was declare on Toku, take Tokyo and bomb it with a Great Artist, all in one turn. I think had never seen such a good effect from a Great Artist bombing before: Tokyo became a productive member of my empire instanteneously, remaining one of the five best cities in the world. And of course there were roads within Tokyo's land to the adjoining cities. It seems to me that a Great Artist is the best great person not just for cultural victories, but for military victories as well.

 

[godotnut]

Judging from the first spoiler posts, I don't think it will be enough to get me the award, godotnut will most likely beat me by 2-3 centuries!!

With family responsibilities for the holidays, I didn't have time to finish the game. Sigh. Maybe next time.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Q. What's worse than losing the race to liberalism by 2 turns?
A. Losing the race to liberalism by 2 turns, then the next turn finding the great scientist that you'd saved to lightbulb education with and then forgotten about.

Yes, the DynamicSpirit tradition continues of reporting a game in great shape in the first spoiler, only to have it turn into an imitation of Hilary Clinton's primary campaign as soon as 500AD is past. And this time, the tradition continues in style!

A Silver Tail

Try this for a piece of bad luck. End of game, nearly building my spaceship, and I finally decide to eliminate Bismarck because he has silver that he won't trade and I'm having severe happiness problems. It's a calculated risk that I consider carefully because Catherine has no coal and if I start capturing German cities, Bismarck's coal will fall to her, enabling her to build her spaceship quicker. I decide the silver is worth it, so I capture the German silver city of Essen, like this:



Yeah, exactly: Would've worked wonderfully if Catherine hadn't settled Bryansk on the silver almost the instant I captured Essen and freed the German borders. Not to worry, I thought. I'll just make sure I culture-pop Essen's borders quickly. So I did. And Catherine did the same at Bryansk, so I still didn't have any silver.

Lovely. I go to war. Catherine takes all the benefits. Just what I need!

Cowardly Cathy

Or for another piece of bad luck. In the early 1800's I was trying to find a way of knocking out Cathy and Napoleon off the top two tech spots so I can have a shot at building my spaceship. After mentally writing off every other option (war would be suicide), I notice that they are both willing to declare war on each other. If only I can save enough gold to bribe whoever will do it most cheaply... So a lot of scrimping later, with getting on for 15000 gold in my bank account (surely that's enough?), I recheck. Napoleon has now decided he can't betray his close friend, while Cathy has decided she fears Napoleon's military might . God knows why, their power graphs are pretty evenly matched.

Summary

But, bad luck aside, I think the liberalism fiasco was what killed my game. At the time it happened, I was just behind Cathy, Toku and Napoleon in tech, in that situation where I just didn't quite have enough techs to get into much trading. When liberalism failed, I assumed at that point the game was now unwinnable, and started playing in a half-hearted, just-finish-the-bloody-game style. Well I did lose the spacerace to Napoleon in 1948AD, but at the time I lost I was so close to building my spaceship that, with hindsight I would almost certainly have won the game with a bit more care. Self-fulfilling prophecy or what.

OK, Let's Start at the Beginning…

Anyway, I guess I should go back nearer the start… In 500AD I'd half-eliminated Bismarck and was beelining for optics in the hope of becoming the trade-arbiter, allowing me to get to astronomy/guilds in time to pillage everyone into the stone age so I could sit back and wait for a cow award.

Cathy Takes Advantage of MY War

I should've realized by about 700AD that my tech pace, weighed down by ex-German cities, was too low and I had no chance of getting optics before the AI did and so should change tack. But I carried on, sacrificing an early civil service, to find Napoleon's and Catherine's caravels introducing themselves before I could do the same. Then a horrible blunder for which I entirely blame Bismarck for having more units than I expected. I went to war with him to try and divest him of all land which was clearly of sufficient quality to be mine by God-given right. Unfortunately, I was trying to do this without diverting my science rate so built only a few units. I was approaching my last required city, the German city by the horses in the German peninsula, when that evil Bismarck produced his unexpected units. Realizing that I couldn't hold the city I razed it, reasoning that Bismarck would settle it again quickly, and I could take it in a future war. Well I was almost right: The city did get resettled within a few turns. By Catherine. Ooooopsy! Yes, I seem to have a knack of helping the Russians in this game. Lexad, Gosha190, etc. - you can pay me later for it!

And Onwards…

Anyway step forward past the aforementioned liberalism issue which I think we'll pass by. There may be children reading this, I don't want to scare them.

Tokugawa Escapes, and I Abandon the Cow

Reached guilds and started building my conquistador army, with Toku as my intended target. Basically because he had the biggest GNP so he was the most urgent to knock out. Unfortunately, just before my conquistadors were ready to be let loose, he obviously got rifling and upgraded all his longbowmen. That basically killed my plans for the cow award. My pillaging conquistadors would've been slaughtered, so I'd have go for the spacerace instead. I still declared war on Toku, but with the revised aim of capturing a couple of cities rather than pillaging him. I did relieve him of all his island cities but without making inroads on his main continent, and on balance that war was a mistake - when I looked at my GNP afterwards, I lost a lot during the war but didn't capture enough cities to make up the loss in any subsequent GNP. Maybe without that war I'd have just won the game, who knows.

Napoleon and Catherine get Married

At any rate, by this time Napoleon and Catherine's love-fest had turned into a defensive pact, which they remained in on-and-off for most of the rest of the game, meaning any war with them would be, as mentioned earlier, a little bit like - say - Mauritius declaring war on America and hoping to win.

So I focussed on science. And science. And science. And just for luck, some more science. I cottaged everywhere, even on tiles that I'd normally mine or plantation. I'd have cottaged over the fish in the sea if the game had allowed it (why doesn't it? Bloody spoilsports at Firaxis!) Oddly, it worked. By the late game, my science was king, overtaking everyone else. But it was too late. The Russian/French tech intial tech lead meant that I was too late to build the three gorges dam, or the space elevator. Or, as it turned out, a spaceship. Spaceship loss to Napoleon when I just had a couple more techs to research.

 

[Jove]

I wound up abandoning this one... I was going for a Conquest victory. I stayed pals with Bismark for the trades, though that wasn't actually too fruitful. Teched up to Astronomy before the AI and learned that France was the one running away with the tech, so I resolved to attack them first, with Cathy's help, then figure it out from there. So, with only a few galleys I started ferrying Maces, Conquistadors and cats over to the mainland. Gunpowder came online during this time, so I resorted to the draft to build up a 'whopper' strike force to take one of France's towns and then use my significant savings account to upgrade a bunch of troops. Whoops! Suddenly France has Gunpowder, so I let the army sit awhile while I built some Grenardiers to even the score. I thought we were ready to go, so we declared war, drew in Cathy, and sought to capture the first town and upgrade our units. Whoops! Now nappy has Cavalry, and Grenardiers, and Rifles. It was a bloodbath- we never captured a town, and I decided I didn't have enough time to see if I could win this one.

Ironically, in all the time I was preparing to invade France, their advancement sort of stalled compared to Japan, who became the new leader. I could've taken them on with a lot less problems a lot sooner, but hindsight is always 20/20, no? Too bad. Still, thanks for a fun map, I can only blame myself for the results!

 

[DynamicSpirit]

One neat thing I did was declare on Toku, take Tokyo and bomb it with a Great Artist, all in one turn. I think had never seen such a good effect from a Great Artist bombing before: Tokyo became a productive member of my empire instanteneously, remaining one of the five best cities in the world. And of course there were roads within Tokyo's land to the adjoining cities. It seems to me that a Great Artist is the best great person not just for cultural victories, but for military victories as well.

I agree with you about the advantages of great artists (though not if you leave it too late in the game - beyond a certain time, even culture-bombing a city seems to leave most of the land around it still overwhelmed by AI culture). But - how did you do all that in one turn? You could certainly declare war and capture a city in one turn, if you use frigates to bombard the city's defences and then attack with units from the sea, but surely it would take two turns to do the culture-bomb, since unloading the great artist from a boat will consume one complete turn, so you can't culture-bomb until the next turn.

 

[toller pretzl]

I agree with you about the advantages of great artists (though not if you leave it too late in the game - beyond a certain time, even culture-bombing a city seems to leave most of the land around it still overwhelmed by AI culture). But - how did you do all that in one turn? You could certainly declare war and capture a city in one turn, if you use frigates to bombard the city's defences and then attack with units from the sea, but surely it would take two turns to do the culture-bomb, since unloading the great artist from a boat will consume one complete turn, so you can't culture-bomb until the next turn.

Ha! So I can teach you something Simply click the ship (even if it has already used up all its movement points - as was the case here, since I had to move the galleon from beyond Tokyo's considerable culture).
So you click the ship and then the "unload all units from ship"-button. Now the units are unloaded, yet they have not moved yet.

After the culture bombing, in the same turn, I went on to capture another lesser city with Conquistadores unloaded in Tokyo : two road tiles, one plain and bingo. And moved another bunch of Conquistadores, also unloaded in Tokyo, in position to capture another city farther away.

 

[beetle]

Instead, you should be ashamed of having read this thread before submitting. Please, read the 'reading requirements' in the first post of this thread again.

Surely the 'reading requirements' are only for people who are in the competition?

The GOTM are entertaining while they are unwinding, but IMHO they offer even greater value after the fact.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Ha! So I can teach you something Simply click the ship (even if it has already used up all its movement points - as was the case here, since I had to move the galleon from beyond Tokyo's considerable culture).
So you click the ship and then the "unload all units from ship"-button. Now the units are unloaded, yet they have not moved yet.

After the culture bombing, in the same turn, I went on to capture another lesser city with Conquistadores unloaded in Tokyo : two road tiles, one plain and bingo. And moved another bunch of Conquistadores, also unloaded in Tokyo, in position to capture another city farther away.

Cooo! I see what you mean. From a quick test in Worldbuilder, it looks like the ship has to be actually in the city for that to work. I feel suitably ejemified, thanks!

That certainly sounds a productive turn

 

[jesusin]

I hope you all enjoyed the game. Please forgive me for not having writen any comments while the competition was open, I'm sure you understand.

After having seen the map, 2 people believe that the map was designed to help players going for culture (but they didn't play for culture) while 1 person who did go for culture thinks just the oposite. It feels really strange to have some people trying to read my mind! 1 person thinks the map was very easy, 1 person just the oposite. At least there's one thing everyone agrees on: poor Bismark!


I've been surprised to see so many players beelining Alphabet. I guess none of them will forget that when you know 1 single AI, they won't trade their techs because of monopoly reasons, unless they are friendly or they are Musa.

I'll add some details for anyone who might be interested. I know I did a million things wrong, but, as always, all advice/commentary/criticism is welcome (encouraged and invited)!
RESEARCH PATH & DATES:

Spoiler :

008 - Mining
016 - The Wheel
023 - Pottery
032 - Bronze Working
040 - Writing (2400 BC)
055 - Alphabet (1800 BC)
057 - Hunting
060 - Animal Husbandry (1600 BC)
064 - Polytheism
070 - Archery (inserted)
074 - Literature (1040 BC)
076 - Priesthood
085 - Code of Laws (750 BC)
094 - Monarchy
115 - Civil Service (1 AD)
116 - Meditation
126 - Philosophy (275 AD)
129 - Horseback Riding (350 AD)
135 - 500 AD (working on Paper)

IMPORTANT MILESTONES (CITIES, GREAT PERSONS, ETC.):

Spoiler :

Cities:
000/4000BC - Madrid (founded in place)
092/575BC - Barcelona (SE peninsula on top of rice & between fish)
135/500 AD - (about to capture barb city near gold & copper)

- Horseback Riding? In a cultural game where you have been unable to trade techs? What for?
- Having only 2 cities at 500AD is dangerous. Specialy if the second one has been founded towards the sea, instead of toward the inland.

My initial thoughts were to get a cultural win and that the fact that adventures got 2 Work boats would mean that all civs could be reached via the coastline. This proved a very bad assumption.

I was thinking the same thing and fell down the same ruinous path (though I doubt my time would have been competitive in any case). Jesusin is supposed to be a good guy, right? He wouldn't actually plant misleading evidence on purpose, would he???
Maybe he's just been rubbing elbows with that shady bunch over at Murky Waters for too long.

Misleading evidence? Adventurers move one of their WB to explore, they see they are alone in a continent with 1 single AI and they don't beeline Alphabet. No misleading.

This was a tough scenario for domination. Normal speed is hard enough, on top of that our continent was pretty sucky (Bismark's land was like an anchor). Really good challenge, I thought I had it won. Too bad I was done in by the UN vote bringing Togu into war against me.

What an experience you had!

Anyway, I hope someone going culture gets the fastest victory time in this GOTM. The conditions seem about as favorable as any I've ever seen.

I don't think the conditions were so favourable (maybe I've seen too many good cultural maps). I don't think Culture will be the fastest victory. We'll see, when the results are posted.

Friendship with Napoleon was harder to get - he even entered "we have enough on our hands" for a while but then he left that state and became pleased to me a couple of turns before Bismark DOW'ed me (1260AD)!

I've never seen an AI go out of "we have enough on our hands" without a war, whether he dowed his victim or other AI dowed him. ??????

Diety next month?

Not this cycle, Thorrez-the-killer-of-Deities

I don't remember all the details....
I launched in 1975 ...1-2 turns ahead of the Japanese.
I razed Paris (amphibious assault) in the 1800's to prevent Nappy from going cultural.
It wasn't very pretty at all...but it was a victory!

Exciting indeed!!!

Jesusin, you have prompted me to write my post.
...
- Anyone got advice on "What does the AI consider before declaring?"

Great! Thank you.

Please take into account that deciding to goto war and declaring don't generally happen at the same time.
AIs consider (at least):
- Relations (some AI won't decide to go to war at Pleased, others at Friendly)
- Power
- Proximity (less likely against other continent)
- Dogpiling
- Defensive Pacts
- Being at war themselves
So having more friends and being more powerful helps avoiding a dow. Causing war among them can also be useful.

Anyways I am replaying the game to see what would have happened if i went with the GP farm.

Please, don't forget to report back your findings!

Also, my Great Artist management was badly aligned... settled 3 GAs in my Hermitage city, Barca... that city went legendary a long time before Madrid and Seville... I should have settled 1 or 2 of them elsewhere or kept them for further culture bombs at the end.

Once you had settled them... couldn't you have built the Hermitage in other city instead?

With family responsibilities for the holidays, I didn't have time to finish the game. Sigh. Maybe next time.

Nice to see you around anyway.

One neat thing I did was declare on Toku, take Tokyo and bomb it with a Great Artist, all in one turn. I think had never seen such a good effect from a Great Artist bombing before: Tokyo became a productive member of my empire instanteneously, remaining one of the five best cities in the world. And of course there were roads within Tokyo's land to the adjoining cities. It seems to me that a Great Artist is the best great person not just for cultural victories, but for military victories as well.

I have never had too great a success with this tactic when the city is a capital, the culture bomb only gave me a few tiles.
Wouldn't you happen to have a screenshot of the bomb effect?

 

[Conquistador 63]

I've never seen an AI go out of "we have enough on our hands" without a war, whether he dowed his victim or other AI dowed him. ??????

At that time I also found that quite unusual. After that happened I did some research in the strategy forum and found an interesting thread on the Logic behind AI DOW, from which this post from DanF5771 explains how such event might occur.

 

[toller pretzl]

I have never had too great a success with this tactic when the city is a capital, the culture bomb only gave me a few tiles. Wouldn't you happen to have a screenshot of the bomb effect?

I didn't bomb the capital though. The Japanese cities were ranged like this from west to east :

lots of cities - Osaka - Kyoto (capital) - lesser city - Tokyo - two lesser cities

So I bombed Tokyo, and its culture was mainly limited by the capital, some distance to the west. I'll see if I can find the save from the end of that turn - that's after I also captured the lesser city between Kyoto and Tokyo with unloaded conquistadores.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Seemed to me that the map designer had tried to favor the peaceful VC's. I know I did some swearing when it dawned on me that I had to attack all civs in order to get enough land for domination .

Made some mistakes early on by building too many units not realizing that less would do the job against a pitiful Bismarck - without the strength you normally expect from an immortal AI. So by 640 AD I had 8 cities and was researching Currency. Do I need to say that I was no way near CS . Never realized that a slingshot might be possible. Out of the 8 cities 3 (including Berlin) were captured from Bismarck.

With such slow research I decided to head for Guilds/Astronomy having domination in mind. I worried that my Conquistadors might come too late and be up against gunpowder units. I managed to turn around the economy building lots of cottages and in 1110 AD Astronomy was learned and my first Conquistador had seen the light of day. To my surprise I had a small tech lead on Toku and Napoleon not to mention Cathy, who had been wiped out . I think the distribution of the AI slowed down their research significantly because there was no trade.

Around 1250 AD a small army of Conquistadors and cats land outside the city of Paris. War has begun. France was defending with maces and longbows and the conquistadors turned out to very efficient against these units. In 1440 AD Napoleon is gone and the whole continent is under Spanish rule.

Now I started counting tiles and it became clear that I needed to attack both Toku and Bismarck in order to get the required land. After cursing the map designer I went about business and DOW'ed Toku and Bismarck a few turns later ~ 1470 AD. I focused on the distant Japanese cities and quickly captured 3 on the western Japanese island. Last 3 German cities were also taken and in 1540 AD it was all over.

I doubt that this is fast enough for any award so now I'm hoping that I was at least faster than my (X-)team mate Cactus Pete:

Dom'n victory about 1550 using standard tactics. Only thing a little different was excessive reliance on running specialists for research, gold, and Great Scientists to bulb Optics and Astronomy.

 

[MacBalt]

- Horseback Riding? In a cultural game where you have been unable to trade techs? What for?
- Having only 2 cities at 500AD is dangerous. Specialy if the second one has been founded towards the sea, instead of toward the inland.

Ha! Yes - thanks. I remember fearing I'd already lost the game at this point. IIRC, the HBR was because I was having trouble conquering that barb city near the copper (partly because, if I remember right, I still had no metals -- which may have had something to do with the fact that I still only had two cities @ 500 AD? . Lesson learned about that.) In fact, given other people's games I think I was very lucky to have that copper location settled by barbs instead of by Bismark.

Great Map Jesusin. Please favor us with another one soon. With you and Dynamic Spirit both producing results like this, before long I won't have any time left to waste on real life.